ABIGAIL GRATER’S INTERVIEW WITH IVAN MARGOLIUS

Architectural Design 2002, Volume 72, number 4, page 126

The greatest contributions to the built environment are those structures which result from a synergy between the vision of the architect and the technical and intuitive skill of the engineer. It is a strange and unfortunate fact that the relationship between architect and engineer is often inclined to be tense and hierarchical. This is keenly felt by architect and author Ivan Margolius, whose latest book, Architects + Engineers = Structures, sets out to redress the balance.

“Engineers are frowned upon by architects,” he explains. “Architects are rated over them, which is a shame because they contribute enormously – they are equal partners. In most books, only the architect is listed as the sole building designer. With Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier buildings, you never know who the engineer was. It took me a great amount of effort to find out who these people were, and sometimes I didn’t succeed, because they were totally obscure. Those architects actually respected the engineers and worked with them on equal terms, but when historians wrote about them it was never picked up, so I thought it was a good idea to introduce the subject.” Margolius emphasises that the relationship between architects and engineers relies on mutual understanding: “It’s very bad when people aren’t open enough to cooperate. You are always trying to sketch out ideas, ask the engineer what he thinks, work round the table and see what can come out of it, rather than just do your design and give it to the engineer to calculate. Maybe the engineer will have a better idea, or maybe the architect will. Future Systems had the idea of this monocoque shell for the Lord’s Cricket Ground, and asked the engineers how it could be done, to structure this egg-shaped form. Sometimes when you design a bridge the engineer will come up with a brilliant idea of how it can be supported, and you will follow his lead. It depends who’s got the best idea.”

Margolius began his architectural career in the London-based practice Yorke Rosenberg Mardall (later YRM), returning there at various stages. Under the auspices of this firm he has been involved in a diverse range of projects, most notably Gatwick Airport – the masterplan and buildings of which, unusually for a project of this size and duration, have been overseen by the same firm since its inception in the late1950s, giving it its current coherence. Here, he played a key role in designing the North Terminal, rapid transit stations, a hotel and other buildings. Over the years he has also worked for other notable firms – Foster and Partners; Koetter, Kim & Associates; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill – as well as being an associate in the smaller firm of McMillan West Faggetter, founded in 1972 by one of his colleagues at Yorke Rosenberg Mardall. This range of experience has given him an understanding of different design approaches, and while the constraints of a large firm are not always ideal for nurturing creative individuality, at Foster and Partners in particular his eyes were opened to innovation in building: “They always looked at other technologies to see what they could use to transfer into architecture – aircraft, automobiles and other industries which would be able to help in resolving certain things like building skin, structure and shapes and forms.” He is now back at YRM for the third time, and seems set to stay.

His current settled position, living in a peaceful Bedfordshire village and working in YRM’s elegant City offices, presents a sharp contrast with the traumas and upheavals of his early life. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1947, he narrowly missed the Second World War, during which his entire family had been held in concentration camps and his grandparents had perished. However, the ordeals that beset his family did not end there: his father, who held a position in the Czech government, was unlawfully executed after a stage trial during the persecutions of the 1950s. Margolius and his mother remained trapped by the oppressive Communist regime until, in 1966, the Czech borders were finally opened, and they fled to Britain to start a new life.

Unable to find jobs, Margolius’s mother and stepfather were forced to return to their native country after little more than a month. Margolius himself, on the other hand, was a student at the time of their flight, and had completed one year of architectural training at the Czech Institute of Technology in Prague. This eased his transition into British life, as he was able to take up an architecture course at The Polytechnic in Regent Street (later to become the University of Westminster).

Margolius’s experience of both Czech and British architectural education systems has arguably equipped him with a more balanced viewpoint than either system allows in isolation. In Czechoslovakia, at least at the time of his education, students obtained a joint architecture-engineering degree, for which a great deal of emphasis was placed on high mathematics and the creative process was secondary. In Britain, architecture and engineering were, and are, treated as separate disciplines. When he transferred to the British system, Margolius had to start again from the beginning. He spent the first year of his training in London producing a model of a house that was methodically developed through considering light, sound, form and the activities of the people within it. He sees the positive aspects of both methods, acknowledging that the Czech course gave him a greater understanding and appreciation of structural engineering, whilst the London course encouraged functional considerations and aesthetic concerns.

A realisation that certain aspects of Czech culture had remained unknown outside the boundaries of the country through its long period of isolation led Margolius to begin his first publishing efforts. Soon after arriving in London, he had visited Foyles bookshop, spurred on by an interest in books that was inherited from his mother, who had translated various English texts including works by Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck and H G Wells, into Czech. Browsing the bookshelves, a gaping hole became apparent to him. “There wasn’t anything there on the subjects that I knew about and which were important in Czech culture and Czech life, and I realised that people in Western Europe, didn’t know anything about it. So I thought maybe my task would be to try to write books which would help to deliver this information through the rest of the world.”

This he achieved in an accessible style first with his book Cubism in Architecture and the Applied Arts (1979). Cubist architecture, despite its obvious relationship with the artistic developments in Western Europe, was a movement limited entirely to Bohemia, around 1910. No existing text in the west covered it; Reyner Banham and Kenneth Frampton were unaware of it when writing their accounts of modern architecture. Through Margolius’s exposition, it received due international recognition, leading to added chapters in revised editions of Banister Fletcher’s architectural ‘bible’, A History of Architecture.

In 1990 and 1992 followed two acclaimed books on Czech motorcars: Tatra – The Legacy of Hans Ledwinka and Skoda Laurin & Klement. During preparation of the Tatra book, Margolius discovered that several Czech architects had designed cars for Tatra, and began to wonder how widespread the relationship between car design and architecture was. His consequent research, which uncovered automotive experiments by many of the world’s most famous architects, led to his book Automobiles by Architects (2000), universally praised by critics for its combination of depth, readability and entertainment. In the interim period he had published two further books: one a popular pocket-sized volume on 20^th-century architecture in Prague, the other on Slovenian architect Joze Plecnik’s Church of the Sacred Heart.

Throughout his life Margolius has maintained a close friendship with Jan Kaplicky, a fellow Czech and founder of the innovative London architectural firm Future Systems. The two have worked together on the competition design of a memorial in Prague dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Communist regime. Margolius also interviewed Kaplicky for book and magazine publications. Like Kaplicky, Margolius is fascinated with the influence of technology and art on architecture. He is now working on a forthcoming issue of Architectural Design entitled Art and Architecture, due out in Spring 2003. His next contribution to the broader spectrum of architectural writing is eagerly awaited.