PAM PUBLIC LECTURE

BY CHARLIE SUTHERLAND

About the speaker:

Studied Architecture at the Mackintosh School in Glasgow.

Upon graduating he joined the office of the late Sir James Stirling and worked on a number of international commissions and competitions including the Tokyo Forum, The Paris Library and the Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore.

Currently is a Lecturer at the Mackintosh School of Architecture and also an external examiner at Greenwich and Newcastle Universities. He was elected as a fellow to the Royal Scottish Academy for Art and Architecture in 2011.

The speaker of the public lecturer today is Charlie Sutherland. During the public lecture, Charlie Sutherland for the most part is presenting his projects and the titled that he given in the public lecture is “BETWEEN THE DEFINITE AND INFINITE” in the lifespan of architecture. Most of the design intension of his projects that he presented to us are based on the site context and human behaviour. He mentioned a key point before he bringing us into his projects which is “there must be a reason for every design, and it will be the site context or human behaviour. Moreover, during the talk, Charlie also mentioned about the transition between academia to practice.

Below are the projects that Charlie Sutherland presented during the talk. From my personal view, I think these projects that can clearly showing up the relationship between definite and infinite.

An Turas

The structure of this building is intended to act as a “shelter” whilst waiting for the ferry. It is hoped that it will reflect some of the qualities of the island, the big sky and horizon, the white beaches, the monochromatic black houses dotted over the land- all distilled as a line in the landscape. It straddles the line between architecture and sculpture, exploring the sensory experience of strikingly framed views. With its black and white palette and long, minimalist lines, it both extends the surrounding landscape, and provides a point of contrast.

Besides that, he also given the 3 main experienced in different part of spatial sequence of the building,

First, the white walls; open to the sky but sheltered from the wind.

Secondly, the bridge; protected from the weather, closed to the sky and the horizon but open to the rock and sand of the beach below.

Thirdly, Glass box; a complete panorama, looking out along Gott Bay and beyond.

Lawson Park- The Artist Residence

Lawson Park is an historic Cumbrian hill farm, which was established in 1338 by Furness Abbey to supply wool as part of the abbey’s production chain. It is a rebuilding project in the Honesty stall. It is also served as a holiday home and a hostel for Liverpool University provide residential accommodation and research facilities for artists, curators and Grizedale guests. And I think this project is good to show us how to use materiality expertly.

The interior and exterior of the building have a very strong contract between both. He want to keep the exterior design as an original old hill farm design and the interior is modern design, so that he used the different material to define the contract between inside and outside. For example, the exterior used raw material which is stone. He said the reason why he want to do like this because he wanted to enhance the space quality of the interior.

The Saga of the Love Shack

Another project that how he use the materiality. This building an innovative contemporary home in housing recession, in the English Lake District. And it was not an easy project to Charlie Sutherland. He wanted the house to be environmentally conscious but luxurious, and above all very beautiful. And it was influences ranged from the film ‘The Ice Storm” to Japanese traditional architecture.

Though the house was not originally conceived as a ‘green’ building, he have worked hard to use sustainable materials and build with its carbon footprint in mind. The house is compact and very well-insulated, clad with local timber grown and processed on the neighbouring Graythwaite Estate, meaning an extremely small carbon footprint from source to use. This timber is also used in outdoor landscaping. Interior timber is mainly reclaimed local cedar.

Chengdu Museum

The New Chengdu Museum sits on the West side of the square and maximises its profile to present a façade of commensurate scale and proportion to embrace and address the huge scale of this new square and establishes a strong formal relationship to it by forming a simple enclosing rectilinear profile. The building further enjoys and celebrates this relationship to this monumental public space by extending an internal promenade of public foyers and circulation behind the entirety of the veiled façade addressing Tian-Fu Square.

Represented as a giant crafted artefact in the city cloaked in a precious skin of copper alloy rigorously profiled to play with light, shade and texture whilst accommodating all the technical requirements for ventilation grilles. Aside from the east face this skin is 'lifted' to reveal glazing at street level, allowing a more human scaled intimacy and a relationship to the interior.

Through the wall materials having the visual contact with user at exterior.Gold colour is used ,because it is the best way to represent the wealthy of china imperial dynasty.

In this case, the building orientation is fixed inside with a great gridline to control the balance between site and building. It was a master of site planning and leader in site analysis to him. The detailed design of the skin and its integration with the structure and the landscape and subsequently all site supervision related to this work.

In a nutshell, what I understand that throughout the talk, every single project which shown by Charlie Sutherland were unique and iconic. And I can see how great that he playing with the materiality and also with the site context. Last and last, before we design, we need to do more research in order to achieve a balance between reality and imaginary.