Palladian Design at the RIBA

RIBA's show reveals how Palladio influenced England and the world

About 85% of the 350 or so drawings by the architect Andrea Palladio (1508-80) which survive are held by RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects. A selection of them is on display in RIBA’s Architectural Gallery as part of Palladian Design: The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected. Appropriately, it was 300 years ago that a translation of Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architectura (The Four Books of Architecture) and Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Brittanicus were first published. The exhibition follows Palladio’s influence from his own works in the Veneto through English Palladianism to the US, India and elsewhere. Recent buildings appearing in drawings, photographs or as models range from Henbury Hall, which in the 1980s recreated Palladio’s Villa Rotunda of 1552, the Prince of Wales’s controversial Pendbury and a fine town hall at Borgoricco near Padua in Italy.

Having visited Chateau Margaux in the Gironde (SW France) in the summer (below lower), I was intrigued by the design for the building by Louis Combes (1754-1818) which was completed in 1816 (below upper):

I wonder when the chimneys were added. The exhibition catalogue makes the interesting point that:

Building a house in France in the English Palladian style was an unlikely project during the Napoleonic wars but the work of Louis Combes in and around Bordeaux demonstrates his interest in Palladianism. Combes owned a copy of Vitruvius Britannicus and, perhaps as an academic exercise, he copied a number of its plates exactly, even transcribing the English room names. Bertrand Douat, Marquis de la Colonilla, decided to replace the old chateau at Margaux in 1810. Combes's final design for the chateau was based on John Webb's Amesbury Abbey, as engraved for volume III of Vitruvius Britannicus (no 33), though with a different interior plan that does not require the staircase tower behind.

Palladian Design: The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected (a free exhibition) ends on 9 January. However, RIBA is closed from 24 December to 3 January.

Le Corbusier in Bordeaux

2015 is the 50th anniversary of the death of the architect Le Corbusier. This post is about the houses he designed in the 1920s which are located at Pessac, a suburb of Bordeaux in South West France.

Le Corbusier was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in 1887 in Switzerland where he trained to be an architect. In his twenties he travelled in Europe visiting Vienna and working in Paris for Auguste Perret, the pioneer of reinforced concrete, and for the industrial designer Peter Behrens in Berlin. He returned to Switzerland for most of the 1914-18 period to teach and develop theories about modern architecture for domestic dwellings. After moving to Paris in 1917 his first commission in France was the design of a water tower (below top left) at Podensac, about 30km south west of Bordeaux. Jeanneret-Gris started to use the pseudonym Le Corbusier in 1920, going into architectural practice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, in 1922. In 1923 Le Corbusier’s influential book, Vers une architecture (below top right), was published and he designed the Villa La Roche at Auteuil (below lower), probably the first building to demonstrate his thinking about the nature of modern housing.

Impressed by the book and by Le Corbusier’s vision of low-cost housing as a means of heading off social revolution, Henri Frugès, a cultured and innovative Gironde industrialist, commissioned his practice to design a small workers’ community around a sawmill at Lège-Cap-Ferret and then a much larger garden suburb of 135 houses at Pessac. This was never completed but Les Quartiers Modernes Frugès, consisting of 51 units of seven types were constructed between 1924 and 1926 and can still be seen (less one, also the only one of its type, destroyed in 1942) in what is now called Le Cité Frugès Le Corbusier.

After a period of decline, the town of Pessac turned one of the houses into a museum (Maison Municipale, open most days) (above) in 1987 and many of the houses have been handsomely restored (below) in the original polychrome (burnt sienna, pale English green and clear oversea blue) used by Le Corbusier on exteriors only at Les Quartiers Modernes Frugès.

However, there are still some remarkable opportunities for restoration (below left and centre), and not all the inhabitants seem to have fully absorbed the modernist spirit (below right):

The “Five Points of a New Architecture” which would feature in Le Corbusier’s later work, particularly the Villa Savoye, arguably remain emergent in Pessac. The ribbon window is certainly there (below upper) but there seems to be limited use of supporting columns (below lower):

There are roof gardens:

but it seems difficult to identify much free use of the interior in the absence of supporting walls, or free design of the façades – but these are fairly small buildings as some interior views of the Maison Municipale below reveal. The extent of the wasted volume over the staircase between the first and second floors (below right) is surprising.

Even in 1924, Le Corbusier anticipated mass ownership of cars and the need for garage space on the ground floor with living spaces upstairs. The garage area of the Maison Municipale is now used to exhibit a model of the planned garden suburb:

The model plaque indicates just how advanced the scheme was in its time with central heating and showers. Unfortunately its cost probably contributed to Frugès’ bankruptcy a few years later.

Visitors to the Maison Municipale are given a booklet (in French) describing Le Cite Frugès Le Corbusier and its history (also available for download as a pdf). One example of each of the six surviving types of house has been classed as an historic monument. The types are:

Maison Gratte-ciel (“sky-scraper”) – see Maison Municipale image above

Maison Isolée (“detached” below left) and Maison Arcade (below right):

Maison Zig-Zag (below top) and Maison Quinconçe (below lower)

Maison Jumelle (“twinned”) no image available. (If there are any errors in attribution of images here, please comment!)

Should you wish to stay in a Le Corbusier house for a few days, apparently the only one available anywhere in the world is the HARG house, a Maison Gratte-ciel, in Pessac.

The Frankton Memorial, Le Verdon-sur-Mer

There has been a revival of interest in the December 1942 Operation Frankton in the last few years. Better-known in the past as the Cockleshell Heroes operation, it was a clandestine attack on German shipping in Bordeaux harbour mounted by twelve Royal Marines commandos under Major HG "Blondie" Hasler. Infiltrated by submarine to the mouth of the Gironde estuary, the plan was to navigate their way by two-man canoes (“cockleshells”) up the heavily defended estuary for 70 miles to the harbour.

From www.c-royan.com

Five canoes set off with ten men: two died of hypothermia, six were captured and executed by the Germans, two survived including Hasler. Six ships were damaged, one extensively. Far from being futile, Frankton demonstrated the need for inter-agency cooperation while planning for the invasion of France in 1944.

In 2012 Paddy Ashdown’s A Brilliant Little Operation: The Cockleshell Heroes and the Most Courageous Raid of World War 2 was published, a BBC2 Timewatch documentary, The Most Courageous Raid of WWII, narrated by Ashdown, being shown the previous year. Ashdown’s account offers perspectives from someone who is both a senior politician and a former Royal Marines officer who had met Hasler. The documentary and book reveal that unknown to the Combined Operations Command who controlled the Marines, the Special Operations Executive were running similar operations at the same time. Inter-agency issues are explored further in Tom Keene’s Cloak of Enemies: Churchill's SOE, Enemies at Home and the Cockleshell Heroes, also published in 2012. Prior to these two books, the best-known account of the operation had been C. E. Lucas Phillips’ Cockleshell Heroes published in 1956.

In 2011 a memorial commemorating Frankton was installed on the southern edge of the mouth of the estuary at the Pointe de Grave in the commune of Le Verdon-sur-Mer (33). As it is fairly remote, two hours’ drive from Bordeaux, the photographs below may be of interest to anyone unable to visit the site. The memorial was designed by Baca Architects and constructed by Albion Stone Restoration for the Royal Marines Association. Both companies’ websites are worth consulting, Baca explaining that:

The Memorial remembers the 10 courageous Royal Marines, the bravery of the captain and crew of the submarine HMS Tuna and the courageous French citizens who assisted the Royal Marines. The four substantial Portland stone blocks step up towards the front of the memorial, where one may envisage a symbolic representation of the Royal Marines emerging from the sea, standing proud. As one moves around the memorial, different compositions are revealed. The separate stones create individual settings for insignia, as well as stones at the flanks to show the story of mission.

Albion explain that:

The staggered blocks create a dynamic ensemble, growing bolder to the front. The blocks are adorned with polished plaques that commemorative the heroism and retell the story. Symbolically the four stones represent four figures emerging from the sea.

and offer descriptions:

Stone 1: Crests of the participants in Operation Frankton: The Royal Navy, Combined Operations Command, The Royal Marines, The French Resistance

Stone 2: This carries the text tributes in English and French to the gallant 10 Royal Marines, and each named beneath a carved floral motif of the Rose, the Thistle and the Shamrock, representing the birth places of the men England, Scotland and Ireland. There follows tributes to the Capt and crew of HMS Tuna and to the courage of local French people who helped the marines, three, named on this plaque who were deported to concentration camp in Germany, and did not return arrested for being associated with Op Frankton, coincidentally, except for one Lucien Gody who raced late at night to warn Hasler and Sparks to flee their hiding place as Germans were close by. At the base are the words of Lord Mountbatten about the 10 men. 

Stone 3: There is a depiction of the Submarine HMS Tuna, together with the five canoes just after the launch, where they were to be together for the very last time. Two crews were lost in two vicious Tide-races on the first night, two men died of hypothermia and two were captured when they arrived exhausted on the beach and were executed four days later. [The quotation is from the C. E. Lucas Phillips’ book, mentioned above.]

Stone 4: This carries the narrative account of Operation Frankton, again all repeated in French.

The memorial is constructed in Grove Whitbed stone which has a surface markedly different from the limestone widely used for buildings in the Gironde.

The Pointe de Grave is exposed to salt water spray from the Bay of Biscay and the effects of corrosion are already beginning to show on the Frankton memorial. Nearby is another memorial which commemorates the American Expeditionary Forces under General Pershing which arrived in France in 1917. Hopefully it will receive some restoration before the centenary in 2017.

Bordeaux’s Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez

Visitors to Bordeaux with an interest in contemporary art should try to find time to visit the Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez. The Institut opened in 2011 in the Château Labottière, not far from the city centre. Until 20 July it is offering a show between shows, Entre deux expositions, exhibiting some of the Institut’s recent acquisitions for its collection.

Before entry the visitor encounters an arresting neon on the Pavilion, Bernard Magrez’s own ‘Autograph’:

A successful entrepreneur, who now owns four major wine-producing chateaux, Magrez is stating the Institut’s mission based on his own four cardinal virtues:

Vivre debout The strength of Living Upright
Respecter l’autre The justice of Respecting the other
Jamais renoncer The courage to Never give up
Gagner en tempérance The wisdom to Gain temperance

These provide a counterpoint to the other neon attached to the building, Le réveil de la jeunesse empoisonnée (The awakening of poisoned youth, 2011?) by Claude Lévêque:

Inside the Pavilion, three videos are being screened, one of them, by Benoit Maire and commissioned by Magrez in 2010, is on the theme of Jamais renoncer. Another, Tracking Happiness (2010), by Mircea Cantor is a hypnotic film of women sweeping sand (left). British visitors may be reminded of Carroll’s “seven maids with seven mops” but can be reassured that its duration at 11 minutes is less than “half a year”, (if slightly in breach of Red Alan’s rule 5).

There are also three large and detailed paintings on paper by a Franco-Serbian artist, Nebojsa Bezanic, exploring the history of three of Magret’s Grand Cru Classé Chateaux (La Tour Carnet 2010, below left) and, as you leave the Pavilion, another neon by Claude Lévêque, advises Riez! (2012, Laugh!, or perhaps more appropriately, Have Fun!):

After the Pavilion the visitor moves on to the main exhibition in a new space adjacent to the Chateau. I won’t attempt to report on all the recent additions to the Collection, but I was struck by the Belgian Wim Delvoye’s Untitled (Car Tyre) 2007 (a hand-carved car tyre, below left) and Serge Poliakoff’s Composition en cinq couleurs (Composition in five colours, 1956-57, below right), one of the earliest-dated works in the collection.

Photographing the exhibits was difficult because of reflections, but prints by Andy Warhol (Depardieu, 1986) and Peter Doig (Canoe Island, 2000) are recognisable, below left and right:

More of the collection is to be found in the main building of Château Labottière which provides a handsome background for sculpture like Jean-Michel Othonier’s Le nœud de Babel, (Node of Babel, 2013):

and for photography - Jean-Marie Périer’s 1966 portrait of Françoise Hardy in a Paco Rabane dress couldn’t be further from Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl of 1985:

Just as much of a contrast are Damien Hirst’s Painted Skulls 2 (eyes open) (2013, below left) and Pierre et Gilles’ Le Désesperé (The desperate one, 2013, below right), more sedate than Vive La France, their previous appearance on this blog.  Another YBA photograph recently acquired for the collection is Sam Taylor-Wood’s large Self Portrait suspended 1 on display near the ticket office.

Finally, although the collection seems to be mainly focussed on two-dimensional representation, as already mentioned it does include sculptures including this piece in the Chateau garden. By Shen Yuan, Crâne de la Terre (Skull of the Earth, 2011) was made in stone and cement and its contrast of skyscrapers and rough stone can be seen as her comment on contemporary China.

Vistors to the Institut’s collection will find that it is well-documented in French and English. It is open Thursday to Sunday, 14:00 to 19:00 but, as always, it is advisable to confirm this on the website.  British visitors might like to think which of their countries’ artists they would to see added to the collection – my suggestions (for what they are worth) are Peter Howson and Julian Opie.

Entre deux expositions ends on 20 July.

Welcome Back, Cmdr Hadfield

Chris Hadfield of the RCAF and, until a few days ago, commander of the International Space Station has been safely returned to the planet via Soyuz. As well as a skit on David Bowie’s Space Oddity, instantly famous on YouTube, he has been encouraging school science – see this video for a fascinating demonstration of the significance of surface tension in the absence of gravity. But best of all, he has been sending back amazing images of earth via Twitter (@Cmdr_Hadfield) so, bearing in mind the geographical interests of this blog, here are two of SW England showing the distinct Cornwall and Devon end of the peninsula and the city of Plymouth and its Sound in more detail. The Dartmoor uplands are top right.

And another of the area around Bordeaux in SW France clearly showing the new Jacques-Chaban-Delmas bridge (built in three years and opened on 18 March 2013):

Cmdr Hadfield, a francophone, commented “Bordeaux, France, si célèbre pour ses grands vins”, so here is part of a relevant map (for more details, see here):

 

 

 



UPDATE 23 MAY 2013

Cmdr Hadfield is continuing to tweet, although he seems to be busy with post-flight medical check-ups etc. He recently sent another image from his collection showing the coast of SW England (Dorset to the east of the region):

and he commented “The Isle of Portland looks like an interesting place - the type I'd like to visit now that I'm back on Earth”, which it is (and Chesil Beach to the west), and I hope he gets there sometime.

A rum little cake

Most towns in France have their gastronomic specialities (produits de terroir) and Bordeaux, as home of the canelé, is no exception. A canelé (or cannelé, meaning grooved) is a small cylindrical cake with fluted sides, height and diameter about 4cm. They are quite agreeable to eat, if a little stolid, and are usually flavoured with honey, vanilla and curiously, rum. I say curiously because South West France is a famous grape-growing area and the locally-made spirit is brandy – Cognac is to the north of Bordeaux and Armagnac to the south - whereas rum is distilled from fermented sugar cane, a crop grown far away.

The only historical account of the canelé that I’ve come across explains that in the sixteenth century the sisters in a Bordeaux convent made little cakes for the poor. However, a visitor to the local history museum might draw a different conclusion. In 2009 the Musée d’Aquitaine opened a gallery with four spaces devoted to the Modern Era: Bordeaux in the 18th century, trans-Atlantic commerce and slavery (Modern as opposed to gallo-roman and prehistoric). As the museum’s website explains (in English):

The source of [Bordeaux’s 18th century] prosperity is examined in the second space, which considers the challenges of Bordeaux maritime commerce, depicted by model ships and an impressive collection of objects relating to navigation. While this commerce initially took the form of direct trade between Europe and the Caribbean, the increase in the triangular trade at the end of the century established Bordeaux as one of the second level slave trading ports in France. The methods employed in the trade in captives from African merchants are here explained, destroying in the process a number of pre-conceived ideas. The tragedies of the decimation of native peoples and the disasters resulting from the colonial wars are not forgotten.  

The organisation of the slavery system in the Caribbean is put in perspective in the third space. Here, documents relate the living conditions and social relationships on the plantations. The sale of slaves, physical abuse, infanticide, the organisation of work, mortality, liberation, maroon societies and revolts are also mentioned.

On the equivalent page in French, “slavery system in the Caribbean” is système esclavagiste dans les îles à sucre (ie the sugar islands). It seems a reasonable surmise that rum being brought back to Bordeaux on the home passage of the triangular trade (left) started to be added to a local cake, probably increasing its popularity. Rum from the French-speaking Carribean islands is distilled from fermented sugar cane, not molasses. Until visiting the Modern era gallery, I had not appreciated the extent of South West France’s involvement in Haiti, Ste-Dominique as it was called, until independence in 1804, and the relatively late date at which France agreed to the abolition of slavery (1835).

However, despite the role of Britain and the Royal Navy in slavery’s abolition, there some matters that South West England should not be so proud of. The impressive Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade was published by Yale University Press in 2010 (its four contributors are all forenamed David!). Their Map 22 (selection below) reveals Plymouth’s early involvement in the slave trade.

Op cit Map 22 Ports outfitting slave voyages 1501-1641 (detail)

This was later eclipsed (selection from their Map 26 below) by Bristol, as is better-known, with minor participation by Lyme (Regis), Poole and Dartmouth. By then London and Liverpool had become dominant in the English slave trade.


Op cit Map 26 Ports outfitting slave voyages 1642-1807 (detail)

To end on a more cheerful note, canelés are not difficult to make at home, providing you have the right mould, example left. These can be purchased at a cost from amazonuk, less from amazonfr or in street markets in SW France. Individual copper moulds, although ornamental, are very expensive unless you are setting up as a pâtissier. Below is a recipe which works, but Google will locate plenty of others:

Canelé de Bordeaux  

Ingredients  

500g sugar  

250g flour  

2 whole eggs  

3 egg yolks  

1l of whole milk  

2 dessert spoonfuls of rum  

3-4 dessert spoonfuls of vanilla essence (30%)  

Description: Mix the sugar and eggs in a large bowl until you have a white batter. Add the flour and mix thoroughly. Heat the milk and take off the heat before boiling, then pour gradually into the bowl with the mixture. Add the run and vanilla, mix well. Leave the batter to stand overnight. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 10. Lightly butter the canelé moulds then fill with the batter. Cook for 20 mins at gas mark 10, then for 1h10 at gas mark 7. Leave to cool. Canelés are best eaten in the 24hrs they’re made. They will keep well for 2 days.

 

ADDENDUM 24 January 2013

This post has turned out to be surprisingly popular.  Perhaps canelés are the new cupcakes as an article by Ann Limpert in the Washingtonian, Bordeaux Beauties: Why Canelés are Our New Favorite Sweets, might suggest - but these are smaller (not unknown in SW France) and there is no mention of rum!

Charles Joseph Minard

Died in Bordeaux SW France 24 October 1870

It was about 20 years ago that someone introduced me to Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. One of the most impressive examples he provided has the title:

Carte Figurative des pertes successive en hommes de l’Armée Francaise dans la campagne de Russie 1812 - 1813 Dressée par M Minard, Inspecteur Général des Ponts et Chaussées en retrait Paris. le 20 novembre 1869  

Figurative Map of the successive losses in men of the French Army in the campaign in Russia 1812 - 1813 Prepared by Monsieur Minard, Inspector General of Bridges and Roads in retirement Paris. 20 November 1869.

This image (left) is now well-known, and much admired for its skillfully combining time, space, attrition and temperature data relating to Napoleon’s campaign, now regarded as to be avoided. Tufte’s website explains Minard’s sources (some of the data he used are subject to later revision) and also provides a translation of his obituary taken from the Annales des ponts et chaussées. The latter appears as Annals of Bridges and Roads and I wonder whether the translator understood the significance of ponts et chaussées in France, referring as it does to the members of an elite corps of engineers, Le corps des ingénieurs des ponts et chaussées, established in 1716, one of the grands corps de l’État. Traditionally the ponts et chaussées recruited from the École polytechnique in Paris (one of the grandes êcoles), whose graduates are known as les X. But France is changing like everywhere else and the École polytechnique, like the École des ponts, which Minard had directed during his illustrious career, is now part of ParisTech.   ParisTech has recently opened an institute in Shanghai, and Minard’s corps has become the corps des ingénieurs des ponts, des eaux et des forêts!

Reading the obituary, I noticed that Minard had retired in 1851, at the age of seventy, and also that on 11 September 1870, within a year of completing his Russian campaign map, he left Paris. The Franco-Prussian war, which had begun on 19 July 1870, was going badly for the French, Napoleon III and his army being captured at the Battle of Sedan on 2 September. Minard, anticipating the route to be taken by French governments in 1914 and 1940, departed for Bordeaux eight days before the siege of Paris began. Sadly, he died of a fever six weeks later on 20 October.

It occurred to me that Minard might have been buried in the Cimetière de la Chartreuse in Bordeaux. But this seems not to have been the case. Although the Bordeaux municipal archives very kindly provided me with a copy of his death certificate (below), they hold no burial record. I can only assume that his remains were returned to his place of birth, Dijon in the Côte d’Or département of the Burgundy region, perhaps for internment in a family vault there. It would be interesting to find out.

It was only when reading Cartographies of Time by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton that I learnt that Minard had in fact produced a pair of campaign maps (below), the first showing the attrition during Hannibal’s trans-Alpine advance on the Roman Republic in 200BC. A recent programme in Melvyn Bragg’s BBCR4 In our Time series, available for download until October 2013, describes Hannibal’s career and legacy.