‘I’ve been dug up!’ says architect John Outram – the dazzling rebirth of ‘architectural terrorist’ John Outram
His cartoon mashup style – full of wit, colour and fun – is suddenly hot, with his stunning buildings even gracing T-shirts and mugs. Our writer enters a world of blitzcrete, shoppertainment and pyramidal glass fireplaces. Article here
‘His chubby columns allude to ancient mythologies’ … John Outram, right, and Geraint Franklin in front of the Isle of Dogs pumping station
A huge jet engine fan in the pediment of the pumping station helps to cool the machinery inside, while also standing as the symbolic source of the “river of somatic time”. A pyramidal glass fireplace in the Egyptian-themed Sphinx Hill house in Oxfordshire summons momentous Pharaonic allusions, while cleverly sucking smoke beneath the floor to a hidden flue.
In Outram’s world, embracing technology and modernity did not preclude the presence of poetry and history. While others of his generation, like Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Michael Hopkins, stripped their structures back, Outram piled it all on, mining inspiration from Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese and Mayan cultures with magpie glee. While Rogers thought that “buildings of the future will be more like robots than temples”, Outram saw they could be both.
‘They wanted me to bring Las Vegas to Wandsworth’ … John Outram. Photograph: John Outram
The eccentric architect has reason to be cheerful. At the age of 87, he is enjoying an unexpected wave of popularity. Having been stamped with the label of postmodernism – out of favour since the 1990s, when his work was described as “architectural terrorism” – he has been rediscovered by a new generation, thirsty for colour, pattern, ornament and fun.
The last few years have seen several of his buildings listed, from the Isle of Dogs pumping station, that cartoonish temple to summer storms, to an opulent country house in Sussex built for the Tetra Pak billionaires Hans and Märit Rausing. Illustrations of Outram’s buildings can now be found emblazoned on T-shirts and mugs, while he has a growing following on Instagram, which he joined during lockdown, where he expounds his esoteric theories to a rapt audience. And now, for the first time, the full breadth of his maverick output has been brought together in a monograph. So how does it feel to be recognised so late in life, after years in the wilderness?
“I call it being dug up,” he says with a chortle. “Disinterred, as it were. It’s quite entertaining.”
Echoes of the Parthenon … Duncan Hall, atrium. Photograph: Courtesy of John Outram
Step inside his Judge Business School in Cambridge, or Duncan Hall at Rice University, Houston, and you get a sense of what the dazzlingly painted Parthenon might have felt like. Outram’s interiors explode in a polychromatic riot, their striped columns supporting coloured entablatures, beneath vaulted ceilings that writhe with decoration. There are metaphorical rivers and symbolic rafts aplenty, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the code. “I put it all in,” Outram once said, “and you can do what you like with it.”
Candy cane rockets … the millennium pavilion at Wadhurst Park, day Photograph: John Outram
To commemorate the millennium, Outram was invited back to Wadhurst to add an outdoor dining veranda, for which he concocted his most elaborate column design yet. “It’s an ontogeny in architectural form,” he says, explaining how the design embodies the development of an organism from its earliest stages of life, just like his shower tiles. Raised on four stout legs, a base of blue concrete contains black marble “eggs”, from which an octagonal lotus of green blitzcrete emerges, marking “the amphibious stage”.
It supports a ring of 12 rods, patterned with swirling bands of blue and white concrete, signifying the first cry of life, topped with a cylinder of translucent crystal and a capital of glossy black concrete – the pinnacle of “thought”. The columns look like candy-cane rockets, ready to blast the Rausings off to a parallel sugar-coated dimension.
Unrealised … Outram’s wonderland of ‘shoppertainment’ for Battersea Power Station. Photograph: Courtesy of John Outram
His most fitting unrealised commission was for Battersea Power Station, which he was hired to transform into a wonderland of “shoppertainment” by Hong Kong developer Victor Hwang. “We planned to have holographic races around the ceiling,” Outram recalls, “and gigantic columns that would open up to reveal things inside, like a jazz band or marionettes.” Given what has happened around the power station since then, his psychedelic phantasmagoria may well have been preferable to seeing it choked with luxury flats. “They wanted me to bring Las Vegas to Wandsworth,” he says, the irrepressible giggle returning. “I ultimately resigned, but we had a lot of fun.”
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