Downs on Sussex
AMONG intellectual ar- chitects one of the least fashionable things to be is an admirer of Sir Basil Spence. At first sight this might seem • • to be sour grapes be- cause Spence not only
gets a lot of plum jobs but, as a result of Coventry Cathedral, is nearer than any other architect to being a household word. Yet when one has walked among the monumental grey and terracotta buildings at the University of Sussex, the reasons for this unfashionability become vividly apparent. The place conjures up illusions with the ease of a genie's lamp. In the expansive placing of its buildings it evokes Egypt and Rome; in the boldness of its vaults and buttresses it symbolises power and glory, but after revelling for a bit in all these associations, one inevitably starts to question what relevance they have to a modern university. And this is exactly what accounts for the scepticism with which many people regard Sir Basil's work.
At its profoundest, modern architecture is a marriage of heart and mind, of form and con- tent. If one of these poles is allowed to pre- dominate the result is either a romantic illusion, as when a bank is dressed up as a temple, or icily intellectual as the glass and steel containers of Mies van der Rohe are often held to be. At Sussex the repeated use of the quadrangular form (what Sir Basil Spence in his notes calls 'the wonderful tradition of Oxford and Cam- bridge') and the picturesque disposition of the various buildings point to the university's roman- tic bias. The courtyards are there because they ring a familiar note; the place of the buildings is significant to those who believe in art for art's sake, but not to others who believe the dis- position should be related to a philosophical idea of a university.
Perhaps the lack of this theoretical basis to the architecture of Sussex is a penalty for its being the first of seven new universities. The college villages being worked on at York and the integrated plan of Essex described by Dr. Sloman in his Reith Lectures suggest that those respon- sible for the new universities, like the new town development corporations, are likely to leard from one another's experience. Yet considering the growing taste for romantic buildings in Britain, Sussex is not likely to fare too badly. It has in its favour a site that is probably one of the finest in the world, a soft, tree-powdered fold in the South Downs, three miles north-east of Brighton on the road to Lewes. It was once the park of a country house and the aura of broad acres that clings to it has been skillfully adapted to its new purpose. This is apparent as soon as one turns off the main road and enters the drive. It leads directly to Falmer House, the social hub
of the University and the whereabouts of dining hall, common rooms, buffet and book- shop. In the best eighteenth-century landscape manner the road in fact sweeps away to the side of the building long before it threatens to disturb its peace, but not before the main axis of the university has been powerfully implanted in the mind of anyone arriving. This axis passes through a great arch into the paved courtyard of Falmer House, under the far wall and across the great, grassy court to the arts building beyond. Here, like an agora transplanted into lush landscape, is the heart of the University—a terraced space dominated to the west by the massive library buildings and looking eastwards through splendid trees to the Physics and Chemistry buildings, one finished, the other still being built. In the distance higher up the valley the two halls of residence are under construction.
This is a far cry from existing British universities, be they Oxford, Cambridge or civic. Even when the student body climbs above its present 400 it seems unlikely that the quiet
thesolemnity of the place will be disturbed. It is this atmosphere that makes Sussex so odd and so interesting. Not even the Modular Concrete Company going about its gigantic meccano work on the chemistry building can disturb it. On first sight it seems that the rural setting must be responsible for this, but looking at Thomas Sharp's analysis of Cambridge in Dreaming Spires and Teeming Towers another reason presents itself. Sharp writes : `The town buildings and the university buildings foil each other. . . . The town buildings are generally in small units, informally associated even though they stand together in a street. The university and college buildings are larger and more highly organised.'
At Sussex there is none of this intimate inter- play. To feel the contrast between town and gown it is necessary to go from the fleshpots of Brighton to the order of the university. Putting a pub and a Wimpy bar on the campus would not alter this : a whole town would have to grow ip on it in order to lighten the monumentality of Sir Basil's design.
TERENCE BENDIXSON
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