Quinlan Terry | |
|---|---|
 Quinlan Terry in 2018 | |
| Born | John Quinlan Terry (1937-07-24)24 July 1937 (age 87) |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Children | Francis Terry |
| Practice | Quinlan Terry Architects |
| Buildings | The Maitland Robinson Library,Downing College, Cambridge Brentwood Cathedral addition Regent's Park villas Richmond Riverside Development |
| Projects | 10 Downing Street, London, England. (1980’s interior refurbishment) St Helen's Bishopsgate restoration |
John Quinlan TerryCBE (born 24 July 1937) is a British architect. He was educated atBryanston School and theArchitectural Association School of Architecture. He was a pupil of architectRaymond Erith, with whom he formed the partnershipErith & Terry.
Quinlan Terry is a well-known representative ofNew Classical architecture and the favourite architect ofKing Charles III.[1][2] He has a keen interest in how traditional architecture contributes to the debate on sustainability and has lectured frequently on the subject.
Quinlan Terry continues to practise full time with partner Roger Barrell under the name Quinlan Terry Architects LLP.
Terry works principally in classicalPalladian architectural styles. The firm, Quinlan Terry Architects LLP, continues the architectural style of the practice started by Raymond Erith in 1928, and specialises in high quality traditional building, mostly in classical idioms. The practice is based in Dedham, Essex, and employs a staff of twelve. A book about the firm's work, written by David Watkin, entitledRadical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry (New York: Rizzoli International Publications), was published in 2006.
The first work by Raymond Erith in which Quinlan Terry had a major role was the new house, Kings Waldenbury, Hertfordshire, completed for the Pilkington family in 1971, when new building in a classical manner was deeply unfashionable with the architectural establishment (though it was more popular with the general public). During the three-year construction period of the house, Terry kept a diary, published later, in which he bemoaned the modern world and stoically defended his conservative, reformed, evangelical faith.[3]
His design for the 1992Maitland Robinson Library[4] atDowning College,Cambridge, won theBuilding of the Year Award in 1994. One of his best known works isBrentwood Cathedral in Essex. This is a radical extension of a 19th-centuryRoman CatholicGothic revival church is in theEnglish Baroque manner owing much toJames Gibbs andThomas Archer and makes little or no attempt to be in keeping with the older building. Terry's new work has aportico based on the south portico ofSt Paul's Cathedral designed by SirChristopher Wren. Unusually, all five classical orders of architecture were used and Terry has said in lectures that he views classical architecture as an expression of the divine order.
During the 1980s he was appointed byMargaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, to renovate the interiors of10 Downing Street, restored 40 years previously by Raymond Erith, Terry's teacher, after war damage. Terry's work there is more assertive than Erith's. InGloucestershire, he designed Waverton House, where he used the style made popular byMatthew Brettingham in the late 18th century, featuring a central staircase lit from above, surrounded by rooms on both floors.
In 1989, he designeda series of three new villas for theCrown Estate Commissioners in Outer Circle in London'sRegent's Park. Building in the park was controversial but said to be in the spirit ofthe Prince Regent's original though unrealised intentions for the park, which was to contain numerous villas forRegency courtiers surrounding a new royal palace. Terry's three new villas have near-identical plans, based onPalladio'sVilla Saraceno, but the external elevations vary, showing respectivelyGothic, Italian Mannerist and muscularNeo-classical features in the manner ofWilliam Chambers. Six villas were eventually built between 1989 and 2002.
In the mid-1990s, Terry designed the restoration ofSt Helen's Bishopsgate, controversially turning the orientation of the medieval church through 90 degrees, moving or removing some fittings, and reworking its previousTractarianAnglican layout into aGeorgian stripped-back meeting house plan informed by the precepts ofReformation theology, in tune with its current firmly evangelical congregation.
Also in the 1990s, he designed a castle forDavid and Frederick Barclay on their private island ofBrecqhou in the Channel Islands.[5]
Terry designed the external envelope of New Margaret Thatcher Infirmary at theRoyal Hospital Chelsea, with Steffian Bradley Architects[6] as the lead consultant and planners for the building; a new Georgian Theatre for Downing College Cambridge; new offices, retail and residential development at 264–267Tottenham Court Road, London; offices and retail at 22Baker Street, London; and Queen Mother Square,Poundbury; and mixed use developmentRichmond Riverside.
His works in the US include the Abercrombie Residence,[7] a classical mansion based onMarble Hill House,Twickenham, London. Complete with apiano nobile approached by an external staircase, it has a pediment supported byCorinthian columns. The house is constructed ofKasota limestone, withIndiana limestone dressings.
Terry's architecture was championed byDavid Watkin, who wrote the monographRadical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry (2006), and byRoger Scruton who called it "one long breath of fresh air" in hisSpectator article "Hail Quinlan Terry: our greatest living architect".[8]
Quinlan Terry is the single most distinguished and prolific architect at work in the Classical tradition in either Britain or the United States. He has attempted more completely than any other architect in Britain to pull the rug from beneath the false certainties of Modernism.
– David Watkin (2006).Radical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry
Conversely, Terry has been the subject of considerable criticism. A 2015 article in theRoyal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)Journal quoted the late architectural historianGavin Stamp, author of thePiloti column in the magazinePrivate Eye, in which Stamp derided Terry's work as "stiff, pedantic and uninspiring, classical details stuck on to dull boxes".[9] The cultural criticJonathan Meades, in a 2020 article inThe Critic, repeated Stamp's strictures and dismissed Scruton's praise, "[a man] who had no eye", as "embarrassingly silly";[10] whileStephen Bayley is among those who have attacked the close relationship between Terry and the Prince of Wales. In a column inThe Guardian in 2009, Bayley mocked the Prince's circle of architectural advisers as "a coterie of fogeyish misfits, dreamers, forelock-tugging courtiers, DIY specialists, greasy pole-climbers [and] short-sighted antiquarians", reserving particular scorn for Terry, "a specialist in architectural pastiche [whose] modesty and art are in inverse proportion".[11]
In 2003 Terry won the Best Modern Classical House 2003, awarded by the BritishGeorgian Group forFerne House inWiltshire. In 2005 Terry won the 3rd AnnualDriehaus Prize, the most prestigious award for outstanding classical and traditional architects. He holds the Philippe Rothier European Prize for the Reconstruction of the City of Archives d'Architecture Moderne (1982).
He was appointedCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to classical architecture.[12][13]
|  | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
