Michael Hopkins and Partners have now designed two buildings for Schlumberger Cambridge Research on the Cambridgeshire fens. The first, completed in 1985, is one of the most memorable British buildings of the last decade. The translucent and truly breathtaking fabric roof above the building's test station and winter garden, and the bravura of its masted support structure is juxtaposed elegantly with the Miesian calm of the enclosing office and laboratory wings. The experimental nature of the building's fabric forms an appropriate metaphor for the pioneering research work into oil and gas drilling procedures that takes place within.
This monograph examines both buildings in detail and charts Michael Hopkins' evolving architectural style.
'Architecture In Detail' is a superbly photographed and technically informative series of monographs which embraces a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, drawn predominantly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each sixty-page volume contains a lucid text by a respected author; a sequence of large-format, high-quality colour and black and white photographs; a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details; and a complete bibliography and chronology, thus making these books the definitive work on the subject. They are essential purchases for enthusiasts, practitioners and students alike.
