Ralph Erskine (1986)
Ralph Erskine: Self
Photos
Quotes
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Ralph Erskine : I'm most definitely achieving a very specific sculptural result, and this also has a characteristic which I like, that it is locally define. It belongs to the cold climate. And this, I think, starts giving regional characteristics. The point I'm trying to make is that architecture- the art of architecture- can be created around these small but important variations from the situation of people in a modern society. Your economies, your techniques of construction and so on, can be similar. And it is the artistic side which expresses very real differences nonetheless. Differences which experiences by the people as important. They are not fortuitous choice, according to architectural fashions. They are linked in the way people live, the choices they make, and the situations they live in.
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Ralph Erskine : When I designed these balconies, I thought of my experiences when I travel in the mountains in the winter. And you're out in the wind, and it's cold and you want to stop and drink coffee, eat lunch, and you look for a snowdrift, and it's turned toward the south and you're protected against the wind. And you go down there and you can take off your outer clothes, you can even take off your shirt, and you enjoy the pleasure of the warmth and so on. Now every huntsman in the mountains, and every farmer, and every tourist who travels as we do, long distances in the mountains in the winter, knows about this. But you find it so seldom in architecture. And obviously, I thought of this, how architecture can give the same kind of conditions that people like: the warmth, the protection against the wind. This is what these balconies are meant to do.
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Ralph Erskine : At each corner, I do a thing which is very common in old architecture, I make an accent with turret. The turrets don't need to be the same. There is a type which is a glass house for vegetation and so on. There is a turret which is much more enclosed, gives a totally different interior experience, a little bastion so to speak, with intimate spaces inside. And then it carries on and we get the main hall between the old building and the new building on that side. And you play out all these difference experiences, fitting it into the nature and also, of course, always, to the way people use it, and giving a variation of experiences, which is absolutely fundamental.
