The two major projects that gave Stone renown in his home country were the United States Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle et Internationale in Bruxelles (1958), and the American Embassy in New Delhi (1959). It is here that his experiments with punctured blocks were first given a comprehensive public airing. The motif of the quarter-divided circle in his grillwork became Stone’s signature. It appeared in many of his buildings, unchanged, and much later in a large quantity of suburban front walls in Britain – it is a pattern we should all recognise. Some of his facades, such as student accommodation at the University of South Carolina (1965) and his own house in Manhattan (1958) are almost completely clad in this same patterned block. Hunting cites this as one of the reasons for Stone’s critical demise: his attempt to create a recognizable architectural brand came with the dire risk of self-pastiche.

At his best Stone designed with the same spirit as Louis Kahn, taking the principles of modernism and blending with historical reference to create buildings with popular appeal. Where Kahn played with form and materiality, Stone was obsessed with layering and layout. He dubbed his approach “new romanticism”, and believed that the design of buildings should “be in the accumulation of history”. No wonder he was never entirely accepted by the dour modernist critics of that era, and for this reason Hunting is quick to position Stone as a precursor to post-modernism. Venturi is name-checked regularly in her argument, though Stone was not about complexity and contradiction – he embraced many of the principles of modernism, his plans were rational and fully formed. His work was an attempt to make modernism prettier, to bring back the decorative element. If anything Stone’s buildings remind us that post-modernity did not begin with the burning of a chair or a visit to Las Vegas, but an accumulation of dissatisfaction with an aesthetic. Stone partly understood this and used his career to help buck a trend.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

The Hollow Men, T.S.Elliot (edit).

The Distance Between an Idea and its Fruition at The National Centre for Popular Music, Sheffield.

All major construction projects start with an idea that is driven by one person or a collection of like minds. Tim Strickland’s idea for The National Centre for Popular Music (NCPM) was enthusiastically received by a steering group at Sheffield City Council looking for a flagship addition for a new Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) planned to rejuvenate a rundown area of the city.

An idea with strident political backing quickly becomes a project in need of funding. A non-profit company, Music Heritage Limited (MHL) was created to take ownership of the project, its board made up of cultural leaders, musicians, representatives from Sheffield City Council and a new Chief Executive – Stuart Rogers, a successful theatre manager. Initial grants totaling £1.5m were awarded from the National Lottery to develop a brief through feasibility studies and a business plan. These first reports were convincing enough to attract major funding from the Arts Council (£11m) and private investment.

An open architectural competition was run by the RIBA, with the contract awarded to Branson Coates Architecture. The winning design was a striking assemblage of four metallic drums expressed simply in plan form as four circles around a cross. The building started on site in June 1997, and was completed in September 1998 on time and on budget. Reviews in the architectural press were flattering.

So far so good – to get a major cultural project such as this instigated, funded, and completed with good will was a major achievement. However, this apparent success was short-lived. The NCPM suffered significant financial losses in its first year of operation. Projected targets of 400,000 visitors a year were not met. By October 1999, a new Chief Executive had been appointed to run the Centre who in turn quit in January 2000 to be replaced by City Council Director. By this point MHL were in administration, unable to pay their creditors, and the NCPM was finally closed in July 2000 just 22 months into its existence. The building was sold to Yorkshire Forward for £1.8 million in July 2002 and was refurbished for Sheffield Hallam University as a student’s union building.

The National Centre for Popular Music was not an idea without success. It assembled the required political will to make the project real. It utilised the strength of an engaging concept to attract good funding. The construction phase of the project was difficult but ultimately triumphant, and the end result was a building with merit that people responded well to.

Perhaps the failure was in the idea itself – not necessarily the concept of the NCPM but its function within the CIQ in a run-down area of Sheffield.

The division of urban districts into strictly defined use classes can sometimes be the undoing of the city. It can restrict diversity and prevent other potentially successful functions from flourishing.The idea behind the NCPM may not have been such a bad one, but once in the hands of politicians, city planners and cultural bureaucrats it became a different entity to serve a different purpose – a catalyst for urban regeneration and a regional talisman for central government arts funding. Left to its own devices and with modest financial backing it might have found a home elsewhere – a different place or a different city. It might have started small in a refurbished building and expanded naturally as its reputation spread and its management gained experience. It was set up to fail by people who had their eyes on different prizes when all it really needed to do was celebrate popular music in a way that people could relate to and enjoy. Did those involved lose sight of this primary purpose early in the journey? If so, then this could be the reason the golden apple became a prickly pear.

That resonate in lithe air. The waning sound
Of breath and function slowly calms
The song to fade, and the light that cuts
Down all other senses is naturally laid.
This bright shine is a conqueror of space. It routes

Its way through narrow canyons with arms
Of stray ambivalent energy made
Generous and tender, like the eloquent touch
That grips a shoulder or holds a brow
In warmth when need is laid out raw.

Small dances over dark boughs
Cast flecks of lime on beaten mulch,
Laden like the London stones which poor
Travellers dream with, though bright dreams sleep
Too well. The rugged close cannot keep them

Safe but absorbs desire without judgement
And carelessly reshapes it as root and stem,
Whilst all marks wither. But dry time seeps
Into moist gullies, forming structure like wet cement
Until the roof is raised above the players hall,

Where a symphony chimes with faint
Regards, a sentimental composition of stone and wood
Placed with cool exact restraint.
And the light that cuts these upright walls
Obediently lies the way it should.

The layout is not completely haphazard, it has been designed in response to the foundations of previous pavilions. And the most intriguing part of the plan is not deference to these structures, but the idea that a usable space can be arranged to the chance of historic precedence. Instead, a perfectly ergonomic building might have been honed for people to relax and play with these functional uses fastened sturdily to the concept, and how orthodox and dull it might have been.

de Meuron, Ai Weiwei and Herzog’s modest pavilion claims that we are capable of adapting to any form that is presented to us. It is better this way. It encourages us to explore; to create our own personal mental maps, way stations and games. It is a demonstration that architecture does not always need to precisely fit its function. Great – now let’s do the same thing with a new school building.

There has been much talk about this issue. Architectural historians and culture freaks have been crying real tears of remorse over the site’s future change of form – whatever form it might take. Sixties brutalism has never been more refined and loved than on this prime piece of riverside real estate. It may not be loved by everyone, though what is? The fact that it is loved at all, however, seems important.

Aside from the issue of its architectural significance – discussions relating to Archigram, craft concrete form-work and maze like circulation spaces – there is another aspect which has been missing from the debate. The main reason for protecting the Southbank Centre is to enshrine its use class. In the current climate, if the land were to be redeveloped it may inevetably require an element of commercial use to make it pay. Older buildings that have a vibrant non-commercial use in the city are extremely beneficial, because they have already paid for themselves. For the arts to survive in such a concentrated area as the SBC, it is important that they can do so knowing there is no rent or loans to pay off – or adjacent commercial interests to acknowledge.

It would be virtually impossible these days to recreate the SBC without some kind of compromise, and for that reason we should keep it in its uncompromising existing form. A Grade II listing should be sufficient to protect the function of the site and its architectural integrity, whilst still giving the centre the opportunity to make the improvements that it seeks. Afterall, the same policy has been applied to the Royal Festival Hall, which has undergone a successful redevelopment programme. Do the SBC want to keep the other buildings on the site at all?

Perhaps this an obstinate question to ask? A man can be both, and more besides, can’t he? My answer to this is no. There are many professions where dual roles are acceptable. An actuary can also be a restaurateur, and a cabby might arrange flowers. But an architect can never make art, and an artist can never make places. One might become the other, but they have to leave their previous form behind forever. This might sound like reactionary dogma – perhaps it is – but this distinction must be made for the collective good.

Keiller is an architect who has become an artist. A thoughtful collection of works from the Tate’s collection has been given an unexpected airing alongside some historical objects, ranging from a thresher to a meteorite. These have been assembled as narrative juxtapositions to silent clips and stills from his recent film, Robinson in Ruins (2010). The result is a carefully constructed muse on the British countryside. Here presented in the aftermath of a battle: modernism in vicious conflict with our cultural rural sensibilities, with a backdrop of class-struggle and globalisation.

Yes – this is definitely art – so we can relax, no-one has been hurt.

East Tropicana is a tributary of the Strip. It is a functional supply route, an eight-lane thoroughfare that provides a conduit for cheap labour from the suburbs. I arrive at University Plaza, a large parking lot surrounded by drab post-colonial style one-storey commercial units, tan rendered, and scan the perimeter for the object of my destination; the only coin-operated laundrette within a mile of the Strip, and one of the few places where I can wash my clothes before I make the long drive to Los Angeles. I enter and take an unadulterated pause to breathe in the moist processed air, a welcome respite from the arid heat of the street. I investigate the methodology, and make my own arrangements with a washing machine. Luckily, I am not short of quarters, a week on the road has provided well in that department, and soon my own sun-worn clothes are darkening in a pool of warm water, giving up their form to the liquid and rotation of the drum. Las Vegas was built around a desert spring, but the oasis ran dry years ago and the water that feeds the half-million residents of the city is now sourced thirty miles away from Lake Mead, a reservoir of the Colorado River created by the Hoover Dam. This water has taken a path into my own body through the ice in the whisky sodas that I drank last night, and into the sprinkler systems that feed the trees lining the boulevards of modest bungalows that surround the plaza, and now into the fabric of my clothes. Current predictions suppose that the lake might run dry within the next ten years, so a new source will have to be found.

A boy, aged about ten, is sitting on a chair opposite to me. He is rocking his head back and forth and his pupils are lodged at the top of his eyelids. He sees nothing but hears everything; the whirring and sloshing of the machines, the clunk of the coin-machines, the change of air pressure as the door swings open and closed, and the soft chatter of the clientele. I make up my mind that he is a fixture here, that this laundrette provides his sensory world and his daily routine. He cannot be moved by the flashing lights or the post-modern architecture of the Strip, but for him, this small interior space is Las Vegas. The young woman in cut-off jeans, whose teenage son is helping to fold her evening work clothes into a carefully separated pile has a different understanding of the city, as does the middle-aged man whose branded coloured shirts now hang neatly from a mobile rack.

But the blind boy is smiling, he is content here. We are behind the scenes at Las Vegas, and for the first time I feel relaxed in this city.

In terms of architectural heritage, the original Broadgate buildings are fantastically important. They were the first that heralded a new wave of City office buildings that addressed issues of public realm and context in a way that was progressive at the time, and very successful. And they are only 25 years old for chissakes! These are great buildings, still fit for purpose – leave them alone. There are plenty of sites around the Bishopsgate area with buildings on them that are more suitable for replacement.

The point of heritage listing is not to preserve the City in aspic, but to prevent good quality buildings being replaced by potentially inferior stock. It is an external force that provides balance, preventing a commercial free-for-all in the historic centre of our city. In this sense, conservation of good quality buildings, from all eras, should be seen as progressive – not the enemy of progress. It is a policy designed to ensure that the overall quality of our built environment makes net gains over an elongated time period.