Alan Colquhoun (1921–2012)

It's been many years since I've picked up my copy of Alan Colquhoun's Essays in Architectural Criticism (Opposition Books, 1981) to read his takes on modern architecture, Le Corbusier, typology, or Robert Venturi. While those topics rise to the fore among his writings, what I never realized until #87 of OASE was the quality of Colquhoun's architectural output. At the beginning of this journal looking at three sides of the man—architecture, history, criticism—is a short section documenting some of his projects, most with Colquhoun, Miller and Partners. What follows are essays by Kenneth Frampton (who introduced the collection of essays from 1981), Owen Hatherley, Michiel Riedijk, Sanislas von Moos, and others on Le Corbusier, typology, and so forth. The issue ends with the editors interviewing Colquhoun about his career and his views on how criticism, history, and theory have evolved in the last five decades.… (more)