Leeds University Campus, Chamberlin, Powell & Bon

I was in Leeds this week and went to see the University campus masterplanned by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, who would later design the Barbican Complex.

The grade II listed Roger Stevens Building is especially interesting. Its exterior form shows how the interior of the building works, echoing the stepped shape of the lecture theatres.

It got me thinking back to my art college days when I wrote about Bernd and Hilla Becher's ascetic photographs of industrial structures. Walter Gropius wrote in the Bauhaus manifesto about an ideal state that architecture could achieve when, devoid of decoration, its form was derived only from the function it served. This state was called Der Bau (something like "The Built") and is the root of the name Bauhaus. For Gropius, it was industrial structures such as grain silos and water towers that achieved this state in practice, and his vision was of an architecture that emulated those structures. Documenting them would be the Bechers' fifty year project.

The Leeds campus seems to aspire to this state and probably comes pretty close, though I'm not sure that the staggered concrete tube shapes that are such a strong feature of the Roger Stevens Building aren't decorative. I would say it's sculptural-functional.