Rick Mather 1937-2013
MATTHEW WICKENS on the life and work of the American born architect.
Rick Mather died in April, aged 75, from asbestos related cancer after a short illness. He was well known for his carefully crafted modernist extensions to several London Institutions, as well as Oxford Colleges, and many earlier residential projects in Camden.
His firm, Rick Mather Architects, was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize twice. Rick was a member of DOCOMOMO -UK and he was very pleased to have seen the original Russian Constructivist works as part of the Moscow Trip in 2008.
He was born in Oregon in 1937. He trained at the University of Oregon (UoO) in the 1950s which was one of the first schools in the USA to break free of the Beaux Arts tradition. Having had a subscription to Arts & Architecture magazine as a teenager, he became interested in European urban design via Camille Sitte's The Art of Building a City and a stack of borrowed Baedeker Guides. He first visited Europe in 1959, visiting Norway and Denmark as research into Oregon's barns as well as more predictable trips to pay homage to Le Corbusier and Rietveld. A story about being invited in for tea by an aging Mrs Schröder to Rietveld's masterpiece was an oft told tale.
In 1963, Mather moved to London, and found work with Lyons Israel Ellis, well known at the time as a breeding ground for architectural talent. After a couple of years he enrolled on the urban design course at the Architectural Association (AA). Mather would go on to teach 1st Year at the AA with Su Rogers, and later Dale Benedict. He would fondly recall taking students to see Chareau's Maison de Verre in Paris 'long before the French came to appreciate it'. Going on to work for the London Borough of Southwark, Mather was able to set up private practice in 1973 following the completion of his first house for himself in Arlington Road in Camden.
Mather honed his skills remodeling domestic interiors, but this was done with a desire never to let any space go unused. Even when projects became considerably larger in recent times, including a masterplan for Central Milton Keynes (2002-12), every square metre was made to count. A considered sense of volumetric play was always apparent and early projects such as the freestanding Gladwell House (1977-79) on Lady Somerset Road in NW5 demonstrate a stated desire for complex interiors held within a simple container. The remodeling of the AA was handled with typical understated assurance and the result was highly regarded by its well-versed occupants. Further commissions for the Zen chain of restaurants raised his profile further. In parallel with these urban commissions an interest in university masterplanning was taking shape and University of East Anglia (UEA) saw the completion of the Climatic Research Unit (1985), one of the earliest low energy super-insulated buildings in the UK. Here we see his first encounter with a post-war modernist setting in Lasdun's teaching wall and the issues related to how to develop it – a theme continued later at the South Bank Centre in London.
Further commissions from UEA for student housing led to work for other higher education clients including a competition win to design a student residence for Keble College, Oxford. This led to further commissions for the university, the most recently completed being a new auditorium within a bastion of the old city wall at Corpus Christi College (2005-09).
A lifelong interest in 1930's modernism, including giving the DOCOMOMO Annual Lecture on modernist houses, influenced the Stirling Prize runner-up Klein House at the top of Hampstead. A simple white box from the outside, the inside is cut apart to reveal the basement swimming pool below and the sky above through various glass floors and staircases. A conscious nod to Connell Ward and Lucas (CWL) and other Hampstead houses was happily acknowledged. His CWL issue of Architectural Association Journal was guarded with pride as well as a complete set of all eight editions of FRS Yorke's The Modern House, and all three of The Modern House in England. The fortunes of those architects who were deemed admissible in one edition but omitted the next always amused him.
Cultural buildings came to fruition at the turn of the millennium. First was an extension to Soane's jewel- like picture gallery/mausoleum in Dulwich. A competition winning proposal to create a cloister, and open-sided courtyard, which provided all the things modern galleries need without impinging on the original building. Along with Dulwich (1995-2000), projects at The Wallace Collection (1993-2000) in Central London and The National Maritime Museum (1995-99) in Greenwich used the same device of glazing over underused courtyards to re-orientate visitors and provide much needed additional gallery and back-of-house space.
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
This capacity to realise projects where others had unsuccessfully gone before was the context for the South Bank Centre masterplan competition win of 1999. A strategy that involved respecting the existing buildings whilst also breathing new life into the South Bank's proposed new 'activated' routes, improved accessibility and resolving conflicts between pedestrians and service routes. Also key was the pragmatic step to ensure the masterplan could be undertaken in stages as funding and tenants became available. The activity and liveliness of the South Bank today owes a great deal to this careful and considered approach which future phases will hopefully heed.
The most recent building to receive critical acclaim was the Ashmolean Museum (1999-2009) in Oxford which seemed to be the culmination of all these interests: working with existing structure, eking out every useable space, responding to historic context and creating rich volumetric play. The new building sits behind CR Cockerell's 1845 original and uses the scale of the original to create interlocked double-height galleries which gather around two atria, each with a cascading staircase that sublty differs from the other in response to views and orientation.
In recent years commissions in the USA, a new wing for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (2002-10) along with shortlisting for the transformation of the New York Public Library (2008), meant frequent flights across the Atlantic. The project Mather was working on at his death was his biggest yet, a new wing for the Peabody Essex Museum (2011-) in Salem, MA. Following his death the Museum withdrew from this commission which may ultimately be seen to have been a shortsighted decision. Perhaps in contrast to Rick's oft demonstrated foresight where almost all his projects have flourished in a way few others were able to conceive. A quiet determination and ability to resolve previously intractable issues through both skill and wit were his trademarks and he'll be sorely missed.