Stirling’s office exhibition at the Victoria Gallery and Museum
Doodles: Stirling Wilford
and Associates, 1984-2000
The son of a ship’s engineer, James Stirling (1924 − 1992) moved with his family to Merseyside as an infant in 1927. Attending Quarry Bank High School, which also counts John Lennon amongst its alumni, he proceeded to study architecture at the University of Liverpool, graduating in 1950. In 1956 he set up his practice with James Gowan, dissolved in 1963; since 1971 he partnered with Michael Wilford, currently a visiting professor at the Liverpool School of Architecture.
The exhibition, curated by Marco Iuliano, provides an opportunity to understand the unexpected everyday life in one of the most inspiring architectural offices of the twentieth century through unpublished documentation held in the archive of the Associates, Laurence Bain and Russell Bevington. After the commissions for the red trilogy - Leicester, Cambridge and Oxford - the German museums, the high-tech experiments and the American universities, the projects featured on this occasion are a clear expression of a ‘monumentally informal’ production – to use Stirling’s own words. All of this happened between the advent of the computer and the digital world, which significantly changed a fascinating way of producing architecture.
Exhibition Design: James Jones, assembled by LSA Creative workshop - Steve Bretland, Matt Howarth and Chris McVerry
Assistants to the exhibition: Davide Landi, Alicja Tymon-McEwan, Yu Zhan and Zhaoxi Tian
In collaboration with Drawing Matter, 20th Century Society and the British School at Rome
Victoria Gallery and Museum, University of Liverpool
16 October 2021 - 29 January 2022
Tuesday to Saturday, 10am - 5pm
Excerpts from Annalisa Sonzogni documentary (Doodles, 2021) on display at the VG&M