Interview with Ivan Pickles (part 1)
Working in a small local architecture practice after leaving school, Ivan studied part-time in Bradford College of Art, where he met Stuart Mosscrop. During his next job with Bradford City Architects he applied to study full-time and was accepted by the Architectural Association (AA) into the third year of a five-year course. He describes this period as ‘just bloody marvellous’ and notes that qualifying at the AA meant you were looked upon favourably when applying for a job. Various posts after qualification included working with Stuart Mosscrop and Derek Walker. By 1970/71 he was working for the Ministry of Public Building and Works in Leeds and was invited to join Derek and Stuart at MKDC late in 1971. Ivan talks of the attraction of designing a new city from scratch, and the advantage of the team-working method; also he comments on the number of people at MK who had been at the AA with him. Ivan comments: ‘Derek… was very influential in gathering together what I consider to be a team of highly talented and bright people’.
As an assistant architect, Ivan first worked on housing in Greenleys; in 1972/73 he joined the City Centre group and became project architect on Lloyd’s Court, the first city centre building. ‘….it was envisaged that we would get the building up pretty quick, to service the building of the City Centre’. By this time planners and engineers had produced the ‘grand plan’ for infrastructure of the centre. ‘… D14 was our site. Everything had a grid reference on it’. He describes how he goes about designing a building, visualising it; also the influences of architects such as Mies van de Rohe on the Lloyds Court design; the choice of granite; use of glass; air conditioning; the inner courtyards and unit sizes. There was also a covered walkway around the building, as for the shopping building. Lloyds Court was to be mixed use, including Lloyds Bank, whom the Commerce Department succeeded in bringing in as the investors.
Ivan also designed Saxon Court and Century House on Saxon Gate, here using yellow brick and covered courtyards for these office buildings. Once again, investors had to be found, but Ivan points out the advantage of MKDC Board being effectively the planning authority. He notes that for Lloyds Court and the Shopping Building, architects had more control; at later stages of the city development, the commercial influences became more significant in the details of building design. He also worked on two more office buildings in Midsummer Boulevard and project managed the building of the first underpass.
No Comments
Add a comment about this page