Robert Adam (architect, born 1948)

Robert Adam (born 1948)^[1] is a British architect,^[2] urban designer and author based in Winchester, UK, in 2019 Adam founded the Robert Adam Architectural Consultancy Ltd. Adam works in a classical and traditional style.^[3][4] He won the 15th Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Prize in 2017^[5] and is a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde.^[6] He is also an honorary fellow at the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland and a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts.,^[7] and a UK Design Council Expert.

Education and early career[]

Adam attended the University of Westminster. In 1973 he won the British School at Rome Prize in Architecture. He then worked as a part-time freelance architectural journalist, whilst an architect until 1977 when he became a partner at an architectural firm in Winchester.^[1] In 1992 he founded Robert Adam Architects.^[8] Awarded Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) by Oxford Brookes University in 2021.

Work[]

He was appointed master-planner of Edinburgh Forthside and designed streetscapes of low-rise buildings in Leith and Granton.^[3] Adam prescribed strict design codes on the area’s developers so that both modern and traditional architects could build alongside one another without clashing. Builders had to adhere to guidelines on size, materials and proportions. Adam also laid out rules on how the buildings relate to the streets such as a ban on glass facades.^[9]

Adam designed Oxford University’s Sackler Library, which opened in 2001 and incorporated Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum collections. The principal building is a large circular library, with a small circular entrance onto the street and attached wings arranged around internal courtyards. His design referenced ancient Greek architecture, specifically the Temple of the Apollo Epicurius in Bassae.^[10]

Ashley Park, Hampshire, a new country house, completed in 2004, was the first new building to gain permission under new 1997 English planning regulations that allowed major new houses in the countryside. It was described the government inspector that granted permission as, “an innovative approach to the classical traditions, re-interpreted for the 21st century."

198-202 Piccadilly, London, a new office building with ground floor retail, was completed in 2007. The classical building was designed to fit within the established historic setting yet maintain a distinct identity. An octagonal tower marks the corner of the site, and, at the upper levels, a colonnaded glass rooftop pavilion screens the plant rooms. Each façade has different levels of detail to relate to the character of the surrounding streets. On the façade are cast bronze column capitals by the classical sculptor, Alexander Stoddart.

His career was the subject of Richard John’s Robert Adam and The Search for a Modern Classicism.^[11] The book looked at Adam’s body of designs^[12] and included a foreword by Charles, Prince of Wales.^[11]

Books[]

Adam published the first edition of his book, Classical Architecture: A Complete Handbook, in 1990, a comprehensive textbook of classical architecture.^[13]

The Globalisation of Modern architecture: The Impact of Politics, Economics and Social Change on Architecture and Urban Design Since 1990; Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.

Time for Architecture: on modernity, memory and time in architecture and urban design; Cambridge Scholars Publishing; 2020, analysed the various ways that time and time theory impact on architecture and urban design.

Exhibits[]

Adam has one permanent exhibit titled, Table: Pembroke in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum collected the table as an example of nineteen eighties revivalism.^[14]

Tower of the Orders, drawing, RIBA Drawings Collection.

Awards[]

See also[]

• New Classical Architecture

References[]