Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An architect whose projects include the Eden Project, Waterloo Eurostar Terminal, Berlin Stock Exchange, and a New York subway station.
On the island
Eight records
Cello Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009: I. PréludeFavourite
I heard him play all of them at the Queen Elizabeth Hall quite a few years ago, and it was the most wonderful experience. It was like in a sort of way a marathon, because it was a a long day. But the thing that struck me most was Rostropovich just coming on to the stage, holding his cello. He sort of sat down and looked up for a minute, and he just started playing, and there was no question as to whether we were there or not. He was listening to himself and playing as an absolute individual creative person. And I personally I think there's such a lot to learn from that.
Requiem in D minor, K. 626: Rex tremendae
Leipzig Radio Choir, Dresden State Orchestra, conducted by Peter Schreier
Both my daughters were at uh an all girls' school, and every year the call went out for any parents who'd sung in their school choirs to do the tenor and bass parts for a big choral work. And it was rather a wonderful experience to stand roaring basses at the back and see these wonderful little A hundreds of little um children in front of you pick out the two fair heads of my two daughters.
La Traviata: Act I. Un dì, felice, eterea
Francesco Albanese, Maria Callas, Sinfonica di Torino della RAI, conducted by Gabriele Santini
I think this is a most extraordinarily beautiful piece of singing by both of them. He has the most languid and mellow kind of voice she has that raw, wild feel her singing, and I think the contrast of the two is quite quite extraordinary.
I was doing a student exchange working in Baltimore. The Beatles were on tour at the time and had just passed through Baltimore. And they did have a huge impact in America and everywhere, I suppose.
Piano Sonata No. 17 in D major, D. 850: IV. Rondo. Moderato con moto
I've chosen Richter particularly because he used to play regularly at the um music festival in the Turenne at the Grange de Malais, which is a wonderful thirteenth century barn. And I remember going round to this barn With the doors open, sunlight pouring in, Rishta practising at the piano, and a few chickens from the farm yard pecking around on the earth floor of the barn. And it's one of the most wonderful scenes you could possibly imagine. The festival was run by some friends of my wife, and I'd rather like to sort of dedicate this piece of music to my wife, who's been the most marvellous support to me all my life in architecture and every other way.
Fidelio, Op. 72: Leonore Overture No. 3
Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abbado
I heard Fidelio in Vienna Opera House. I remember sitting, as it happened, in a box over the orchestra when the second act starts with this extraordinary feeling of anticipation, a sort of tremoring anticipation. and you hear this music in the virtually in the dark. before the curtain goes up on on the second act.
It has a kind of raw and rasping quality about it, particularly the opening guitar, and I think it it sort of expresses the exuberance of what one felt in the sixties. It wasn't really protest as so much as the feeling that almost anything goes.
Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat major, K. 452
Catherine Willison, who happens to be a young music student who's living in our house at the moment. And I've listened to her her quintet practice many, many an hour in our house. I think it's absolutely wonderful to listen to young musicians when they're still enormously enthusiastic and keen on what they're doing.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29You make [your buildings] sound like children, your offspring. Is that how you think of them?
Well, certainly the process of designing a building is very much like sort of bringing up a child, I think. And there is a point when somehow they leave home and you have to let them have their own life.
Presenter asks
5:30You say that the artist is his own best critic. How does that apply to you, the architect? Because you can't allow the audience to be an irrelevancy... you've got to care what we think.
Well, that's a very interesting point because I was working out the other day that something around about twenty or thirty million people use our buildings every year. But it's a very, very delicate balance. You have to do what you think is the best detail and the best quality of work you possibly can. But at the same time, it has to be a hundred percent suitable for its purpose.
Presenter asks
10:32Music is an escape for yourself at your public school. Escape from what?
Well, I suppose in those days well, the level of my interest in the teaching wasn't very high, I have to say. And so one sort of sought solace a bit in music, in singing in the choir, in listening to music, and, to some extent, to art and the theatre.
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian
I'd like to take the complete works of Patrick O'Brien, who's a wonderful sea writer, and combines wonderful detail about the ships with a terrific span of history. And I know that actually it might be rather a big volume, but that's what I love to have.
The luxury
I thought I'd like to take the RIBA Drawings Collection. ... I suppose if one was really getting desperate for what to do. You could pace all these buildings out on the sand.
Presenter asks
18:50At what point then did you pull all those threads together and say, I know what I really want to do. I want to be an architect?
I was in Edinburgh visiting my elder sister, who'd by that time got married to someone who was teaching at the Art College, and he showed me the architecture school. and they were all busy building models and drawings, and I went through several of the studios, and I just instantaneously thought this this is for me. There was no question of doubt in my mind.
Presenter asks
28:33Would you like to build a housing estate? Would you like such a commission?
I'd love to, yes. And I I think that the more unfettered one was, probably the more popular the houses might be.
“I always think in some ways architects are shy of talking about beauty, but you you will find me sometimes standing at night looking at one of my buildings and enjoying it.”
“I think buildings well, in a very basic sense, have to be honest. They have to have structure and they have to go together. And there's no such thing, I hope, with our buildings as saying, Well, don't worry, nobody can see that bit.”
“I think the basic core, the heart, and the bones of a building, should be designed in such a way that they can go on being used.”