I have long admired the creative genius of Bobby McAlpine, and more recently, the architectural talent of McAlpine Tankersley alumni Ruard Veltman and Ken Pursley. When I discovered Veltman and Pursley I instinctively felt that there was something, some part of their design aesthetic, that all three architects shared and that I had been trying for some time to understand and to label. The handle that I had been grasping for came to me this morning…architectural lyricism. Vague and mutable as the term may be, it seemed to capture for me the certain je ne sais quoi that I had been searching for to express in words the emotion that their work had evoked in me.
Anchored in classicism, lyrical architecture allows more freedom of expression and greater fluidity. Exuberance and flourish and perhaps a bit of exaggeration are part of the vernacular. Architectural poetry; Sensualness of expression; The substance of aesthetic expression; The raw material of pure art; An intensity of engagement with one’s vision. These are ways that others have described lyricism as it relates to art andarchitecture.
Taken from the websites of http://www.ruardveltmanarchitecture.com and http://www.pursleyarchitecture.com/home/inside, what I see in these Veltman and Pursley renderings is a classically disciplined, exuberant and poetic expression of these two architects’ inner vision of what architecture should be.
