Between expression and type: James Stirling in the fifties

Abstract

The fifties represent the period when James Stirling matured, the time when he confronted the recent schism of modern architecture and developed a solid intellectual position which would take shape in his later work. This article deepens in this attitude which, cemented in the necessary reintegration of modernity and history, pretends to reinvigorate architecture from two critic concepts: expression and form. The first one, offering an alternative to the stylistic problem of contemporary architecture through the expression of function, this understood as the central idea of modernism. And the second, through the instrumental use of its abstraction, type, rediscovering form’s signifying potential and, therefore, its ability to convey the values of modernism, present in any era. The chronological review of some of his projects, theoretical writings and relevant references from his education describes the progressive dialogue between these two concepts, one firm and the other in constant evolution, up to 1959, the year when he writes “The Functional Tradition and Expression” and designs the Churchill College, when the integration of method and aesthetics is achieved establishing the basis for his subsequent architecture.