HRH Design

   The New York Times
   February 2, 1995, p. C4.


   Gothic Wins at Windsor Castle


   Predictably, no sooner had Sidell Gibson, the winning firm,
   unveiled its completed design -- which was meant, it said,
   to help evoke Windsor's Gothic past -- than critics derided
   it as "a watered-down piece of eyewash," among other
   things.


   "When we first looked at Windsor Castle, we were struck by
   the extent to which it encapsulates so many layers of
   history through its 900 years of life," Giles Downes, a
   partner in Sidell Gibson, said in the firm's presentation.
   "In the past 20 years, architecture has been rediscovering
   its roots, and we have based our design approach on our own
   modern reinterpretation of Gothic."


   By Sarah Lyall


   London, Feb. 1 -- Although it gutted sections of one of
   Britain's more spectacular landmarks, the fire at Windsor
   Castle two years ago wasn't, in the end, a total disaster.
   For one thing, it encouraged Queen Elizabeth II to open
   another of her many homes, Buckingham Palace, to
   admissions-paying tourists as a way to raise money for
   repairs.


   The fire also presented architects with the chance to
   redesign a relatively small but functionally crucial part
   of the castle, which was built after the Norman Conquest
   and sprawls, in heavy stone majesty, over 13 acres in the
   town of Windsor. (More than 100 rooms were damaged in the
   fire, but most are being repaired exactly as they were.)


   Six firms submitted a variety of ideas, ranging from
   faithful restorations to startlingly modernist plans.
   Predictably, no sooner had Sidell Gibson, the winning firm,
   unveiled its completed design -- which was meant, it said,
   to help evoke Windsor's Gothic past -- than critics derided
   it as "a watered-down piece of eyewash," among other
   things.


   The design, based in part on the vision of Sir Jeffry
   Wyatville, who designed sections of the castle in a
   neo-Gothic style in the 1820's, calls for a new octagonal
   anteroom to be erected on the site of the old private
   chapel, which is to be rebuilt nearby in a new rectangular
   shape. The ceiling of St. George's Hall, which burned and
   fell in, is to be replaced with a livelier, more elevated
   ceiling. (It had already been decided to rebuild the hall
   itself, used for state banquets, exactly as it was.) The
   new ceiling will allow the traditional shields of the
   Knights of the Garter, which were displayed on the old
   ceiling, to be reinstalled, with room for about 100 new
   ones.


   "When we first looked at Windsor Castle, we were struck by
   the extent to which it encapsulates so many layers of
   history through its 900 years of life," Giles Downes, a
   partner in Sidell Gibson, said in the firm's presentation.
   "In the past 20 years, architecture has been rediscovering
   its roots, and we have based our design approach on our own
   modern reinterpretation of Gothic."


   The wave of criticism that greeted the plan is the
   requisite response in a country locked in a vicious battle
   between architectural traditionalists, championed by Prince
   Charles, and modernists, represented by many of Britain's
   leading contemporary architects. While some people
   applauded the design -- The Daily Telegraph said in an
   editorial, for instance, that "there will always be room
   for imaginative reconstruction of past styles" -- modernist
   critics and, of course, some of the losing architects, said
   that the Sidell Gibson design was woefully retrograde.


   "What it's saying about Britain is that it's a country
   that's culturally timid, trying to recapture its
   19th-century history and not looking forward to the 20th
   century," said Jeremy Melvin, a senior lecturer in
   architecture at South Bank University. "When the castle was
   built it was built in the manner of its time. This is one
   of the principal royal residences, and it should have
   something of the 20th century in it, not a pale imitation
   of something that's at least 100 and possibly 600 years out
   of date."


   John Outram, the acclaimed British architect, whose own
   concept was rejected last summer, said that the winning
   plan took far too literally the l9th-century Gothic revival
   that informed Wyatville's designs.


   "It's just a pity that they didn't have the courage to keep
   the spirit but depart from the form," he said. "When
   Wyatville did it, it was a serious style. But now it's
   not."


   The entire refurbishment is expected to cost $48 million to
   $64 million, about 70 percent of which will come from
   admissions fees at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace and
   the rest from the Government's regular allocation to the
   royal household, said Dickie Arbiter, a royal spokesman.


   Mr. Arbiter shrugged off criticism of the winning design,
   saying that the plan had been approved by a panel that
   included Prince Charles and his father, the Duke of
   Edinburgh, along with representatives of the Royal
   Institute of British Architects and the Royal Fine Arts
   Commission -- "the sort of people you would expect on a
   committee like this," he said.


   He said that Prince Charles, who is prone to making biting
   public denouncements of the buildings he particularly
   dislikes, had not had disproportionate influence over the
   final design. "This was not an ad hoc decision by the
   Prince of Wales, or by the Duke of Edinburgh," Mr. Arbiter
   said.


   Another respected architect whose submission was rejected,
   Sir Colin Stansfield Smith, said it was important to put a
   modern cast on a structure whose previous architects had
   always designed with "the conviction of their own time."


   "We can't ape the past," he said, "At the end of the 20th
   century there's a collapse of time. The worry is that
   people are looking backwards, rather than optimistically
   into the future."


   Describing his own concept of building a majestic glass
   tower that would rise "like a beacon or a phoenix" over the
   castle, he said: "We were going into the sky with a great
   glass lantern that at night would suffuse with light."


   But Mr. Downes, the Sidell Gibson partner, said the design
   had to take into account what the building means and how it
   looks now. "We felt it was right not to contradict what had
   gone on before," he said, "but to work with it and enhance
   it."


   END