On beginning

“A city is a place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.”

Louis Kahn

1980. Coventry

I can recall with some clarity the moment that I first became aware of a building being the result of a considered process.

We were visiting Coventry Cathedral as a family, taking along the impressively surly French exchange student who was staying with us. My parents were doing the guided tour thing, while I lagged behind slouching with my cheek pressed against a cold, glass smooth, concrete column. Craning my head back, I traced the line of the cruciform support up its length to the fanning timbers of the roof structure overhead. I put my arms around the girth of the column and felt the entire weight of the building supported on the slender post which hovered over the ground on a square bronze pin.

I looked back along the nave towards the ruins of the old cathedral and stepped into intense luminous pools of colour on the polished granite floor. The pink sandstone saw-toothed walls, which had appeared massive and unbroken, were now replaced by slivers of coloured glass, making the feat of the matchstick-thin columns seem even more remarkable. At the end of the building was a sheer glazed face, flooding the space with even more light.

The transparent end wall seemed to echo the sandstone ruins that it framed. Etched angels floated before silhouetted gothic openings filled with the heavy grey gloaming sky of middle England - the whole scene appearing as if arranged on a painter's canvas, rather than the forlorn monument to man's destructive nature.

Of course, this memory is very likely to have become embellished over time. My thoughts on that day were undoubtedly slightly more prosaic. The realisation or, more fittingly, epiphany, that day was however that this was something that had been thought about, arranged, composed. Designed. It had a tactile quality and a lightness of material that belied its volume and purpose. There was a sense of occasion, of humanity and serenity. The scale was awe inspiring while also being relatable. The whole space hummed with the movement and hushed talk of its visitors. Its materials had individual characteristics; smooth, rough, warm, cold, absorbent, reflective. They even had particular smells that I can clearly recall to this day.

It is undoubtedly one of the factors that led me to set off along the (long and winding) road to architecture.