New Book
CURVEDSPACE Northumbria University City Campus East
Reviewed by David Hide
The architecture of Northumbria University’s new campus has a bold story to tell and comes into the ‘like it or hate it’ category. Fortunately for me, I enjoy much of what I see from the Central Motorway and have kept meaning to turn off to have a closer look. I know others who disagree, though I am confident that even they must at least prefer it to the old Warner Cinema. Either way, what is certain is that it offers a wonderfully rewarding subject to a photographer with a good eye. Steve Mayes’ eye is in the ‘photography is art’ category and is outstandingly good.
For the benefit of other photographers, all the technical details are given for each of the 36 shots: camera type, shutter speed, aperture value, ISO speed and focal length. For the benefit of those who enjoy pictures but find long descriptive passages tedious, there are none. Facing each illustration is a succinct quotation chosen from an astonishingly wide range of sources: Aristotle “The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree”, Pythagoras, Machiavelli, Galileo, Brunel, Gropius, Mondrian (‘Curves are so emotional’) and Warhol, to name but a few.
The book’s title is explained in the (very brief) introduction: ‘In curved space the rules of Euclidean geometry are challenged. Parallel lines can meet, and the sum of the angles in a triangle can be more or less than 180 degrees, depending on how space is curved.’ Oddly, though, the name of the architect who rose to this challenge gets no mention.
Overall, this is an idiosyncratic book. Like the campus itself, you will either like it or not, entirely according to taste. It was commissioned by the University to ‘document the creation of new spaces for learning, teaching and research’ – spaces which are of a very distinctive character – and I am grateful to have been prompted to have a closer look.
City and County
May 2009
