Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
of course, as a direct result of a petition from the higher apes who complained
bitterly of the vagaries of our climate. Then, no doubt, the chief gorilla having
heard the weather forecast will instruct the head keeper to take the necessary
steps to preserve an equable climate in his commodious cage. He—the gorilla,
not the keeper—is a delicate subject, liable to catch cold and particularly
prone to influenza.
(ADC 1933:317)
Aspects of fashionable, modern urban dwelling were alluded to by referring to the
gorillas' new 'flat' into which the animals had moved and where they staged a
'house-warming party' for Fellows of the Zoological Society (
Daily Telegraph
1933).
The
Morning Post
(1933) laid a layer of domestic bliss on the scene:
Mok soon realised that they had a sunshine roof and a constant stream of
purified air. He beat his chest, and tore round the cage. Madame Moina, as
the housewife, was more interested in the revolving walls and dust-proof
screens, and shot up to the ceiling on a length of rope, the better to examine
them.
While the other animals were allegedly 'jealous' of Mok and Moina's 'luxury home',
critical acclaim followed. Zuckerman (1933), writing delightedly from his new post
at Yale University, said: 'I shall see to it, Mr Tecton, that you are appointed official
architect to all gorillas, chimpanzees, monkeys, human beings, and inhuman
beings.' In more measured tones, Mumford (1937), in his column in
The New
Yorker,
hailed the Gorilla House as the only example of a truly flexible architecture—
a building adapted perfectly for a healthy and evolving function—in the Museum of
Modern Art's exhibition on English modernism.
Even greater public and professional acclaim came in 1934 with the completion of
the Penguin Pool (see
Figure 11.1
), possibly the best-known modernist artefact in
Britain. It was named as one of the most significant buildings of its time by the
AJ's
'vigilance committee', with votes from the likes of poet John Betjeman, artist John
Piper and London Transport's Frank Pick (
AJ
1939). It entailed a strictly and
elegantly mathematical concrete ellipse enclosing a shallow pond. In the centre was
a pair of concrete spiral ramps forming an apparently interlocking double helix
shape, which, without external support, sloped down gradually from a platform into
the water. The form was, apparently, inspired by an egg. As Lubetkin put it:
An egg is one of nature's perfect shapes. It has a purity that I would compare
to a Brancusi. In the mathematical interpretation, the setting out of the
structure had to retain the eloquence of an egg, for I wanted the cool,
intellectual geometry of the form to be intensified by the organic growth of a
nearby tree…. It's the necessary contrast, you know,…between the wildness of
nature and the order of architecture, that's the underlying theme of all
Palladio's work.
