 |
I
was working as a technical illustrator at Rolls-Royce. Avon jet engines. |
A discussion with Brian and Mae Miller, Cumbernauld, March 2003.
|
I
was working as a technical illustrator at Rolls-Royce. Avon jet engines. |
I used to do little thumbnails
of abstract paintings i was going to do, coloured them and so on. So I went
for the job at Cumbernauld with
all my technical
drawings… I
had the other things in the folio too being kept flat between 2 pieces
of cardboard .
Derek Lyddon was interviewing me and he went ‘ I
see you exhibit paintings and sculptures,..'
I said "mobiles just now"…he
said "have you got any of that work?"
I said no, I’m here for the drawing office job, but here’s these…”Oh!’ he
said.
He
took them to Hugh Wilson and I got the job. I never did what they wanted
on the job application, that never happened. Subsequently there was a
post for
an exhibition
designer, and I got that.
So I became the first artist in the new town system in Britain…. The Glenrothes
people came, and I showed them a little movie and display of what I’d been
doing, and they got David Harding…which was great.
In essence..I was
the Leonardo to his Michaelangelo (laughter) I dug a lot of little holes
all over the place, but he concentrated…
art
should be involved at all levels. The little bit of paper advertising
some show in a shop is equally a part of the environment as major pieces
of sculpture
on
plinths… I never liked plinths anyway.
I think the time I felt happiest about what I was there for was when one day I got this phone call at home. "How do you make burgundy?" And all I could think of was that this was a wrong number and they wanted a home wine hotline or something- but no, they wanted to paint their front door and gave me a call. So that was a fine moment, the thought that the town artist was somebody you could just call up.
THEATRE
So my road to Damascus was on the road to Airdrie one evening. Derek
had asked me would I come and project slides at some council or local
meeting – little
groups all over wanted an architect to come and show pictures of Cumbernauld.
On the way he said, "What’s your hobby?"
I said I liked American humour; Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, things like that.
He says ‘you must do something at the Cottage Theatre'- …till
then I’d never thought…
I was terribly shy, - I mean going in to shops was a problem!- and I
suddenly realised that I was in a New Town. As I say it was
a road to damascus- I said "okay I’ll
try that.”
So I got involved with the theatre as well….
MAE
my story about Derek- having come from engineering- I worked in
the office where I met Brian. Then we came out to Cumbernauld…
It wasn’t unusual on Sunday morning to hear the knock on the back door,
it would be Derek in his welly boots going "I was just out
and around, just wondered how you were doing.”
- this was just after we’d had our second child- he took his
wellingtons off at the back door , poddled in in his sock soles- and
I was thinking
this is Brians boss, what do I do- and I suddenly realised he was an
equal, not
someone who was different. Such a shock.
- A complete change.
BRIAN
I think it came out of the war, the more mature people had either
war experiences or the idea of the National Health; a bright new future
and to
be an architect,
that was what you were going to do. I remember one lunchtime playing
cricket with the chief architect Dudley Leacker….
After Hugh left- and he had a metal leg . Bowling and hitting his leg
lbw…
There were no problems between ourselves. The administrative side were a bit civil servanty
but they kept to themselves. Planners architects engineers; we didn’t
have any classes.
MAE
Our first car we got in 1971- and it was nothing unusual for the
car to drive up to the back. Brian would get out , Deiggo Neruka(?)
Victor Lim
others
all
pile out, up through the corridor, up out the front door cos their
flats were opposite ours…
I’m extremely grateful my two children grew up with every nationality
you could think of.
Amazing. It was a magic place.
The people and the team
The structure was a chief architect and planning officer- Hugh Wilson- at the
top.
There was then a chief planner and a chief architect, and below those there was
Housing, Town Centre, there was Engineers under the chief engineer and they broke
down to Bridges, Roads; stuff you didn’t see, that was the engineers. Stuff
above the ground, and stuff below the ground.
Lots
of things could happen within the group, like the magazine club, drawings on
the walls. The notice board was a great feature. I would do exhibitions for
the design office themselves on comic strips, things like that. Posters, cycle
posters .
It was an exciting time, and people…
Early on we were still coming out from Glasgow by bus. It was the year
of the heavy snow; 62? . I’m walking up the drive to Cumbernauld
House and over the ha ha on the lawn comes this architect on skis,
schooom! up to the house,
sticks his skis in the snow, opens the window steps in and starts to draw.
It was like that. Working late into the night…
I missed the Israeli six day war completely, groups had formed for the design
competition for the new town at Eskbuu – where Nokia phones now are-
so there was 2 rival camps. Diego Nerruke from Bombay, Victor Lim from Singapore-
I would cycle home from the office at 5pm have my tea and cycle out to Kildrum
and work till 3am, cycle back, sleep,work the next day. This went on all week
and the only image I'm left with was that the radio was on and kept hearing ‘Whiter
Shade of Pale” the record of the time. So that was the six day war and
we missed the whole thing. So Saturday both groups were ready to get their stuff
put them in a box and airfreight them to Finland, just after getting the guy
who did the blueprints to do some last minute stuff ….. they forgot something,
being too polite to ask for a lift they ran up the hill to him with their stuff…
These competitions were a way architects could leap, grab, get a task to do,
start up a business. Another one at the time was the buildings opposite the
Houses of Parliament which have just been completed. Slightly gothic looking.
Curiously
enough Cumbernauld and Sydney Opera House are the same age…
Both started in 56. one was a competition.
Geoff Copcutt was the chief architect for the Town
Centre,or the Group Leader for the Town Centre and he was basically a loose
cannon.
So an New Town was about a New kind of person?
BRIAN
You left behind certain things in Glasgow. For myself I became
articulate- or more articulate- also the social mix. (Gestures across
front yard)
he built the QE2,2 doors down . And we still see the Hannings…
The sense of a mix with English enthusiasts – the Labour party
was injected with enthusiasm because of guys from London coming up.
THE DIP BOUTIQUE
And... we built a shop. We were involved in the boutique…
MAE
where the opticians is , in the town centre…
BRIAN
Very 60s, I designed the shop front. It was built in a coffin fitment
factory in Kilsyth.
There was an engineer, a Hungarian
freedom fighter and Scottish fencing champion Attilla Borzoni,
2 English architects, the
son of the Kilsyth coffin fittings factory, myself, and the
wives….
We put the dressmaking to outworkers in the town , I designed all
the logos, things like that. The factory workers were worried when
they
saw these shapes;
they thought it was new coffins that were going to be made- this
modular thing I’d designed-
MAE
We also tried using the sewing machines in the coffin factory but
of course coffin interiors don’t need lock stitching, just a sort of chainstitch
so of course you could imagine these outfits being made and all of a sudden somebody
pulls it ….
BRIAN
...
and all of a sudden your arse would be out of your shroud….
MAE
… so that fell by the wayside…..
It opened 67 till 69. We sold inflatable furniture…
BRIAN
some of which we still have… posters, we tried to sell at christmas.–
One time I remember the space
where Mackays was hadn’t been let and I was building
a xmas scene.I had tried to get the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour to sell
in the shop and this fella in a suit came up, came to explain we would have
to take
large
orders….
It was opened with Jim Mullen of Morrisey Mullen the jazz guitar
player , Andy Park, Bobby Wishart, they played to break the ribbon
to open…this
magnificent shop.
Families came to complain. We were selling these button badges ‘I
am a virgin'.
“
how dare you sell this to my daughter!”
The amount of till rolls we went through- cos all the architects would be
going “hows
the business going?” ching ching…. No sale…ching ching.. no
sale….
By the end of the week a huge strip of paper with no sale no sale-
down the length –oh there's a sale!
No sale….
It ended up in 2 divorces, an English architects’ wife and
the Hungarian freedom fighter ran off together…
… the dip Boutique… same
way up or down either way round…we had no money but I was
thought of as someone with ideas…
The atmosphere
So one week you’d be running the shop, next you’d
do some headed notepaper,….
Yes.Recently I got
a phone call from the Historical Society- it really upset me to think I was
historical (laughs) would I
go to
Motherwell
Heritage Centre,
there was a week of local history… I dug out the slides,
went with a slide talk, the guy in front was doing the canals
y’know, and at
the end this old man comes up to me at the end and says “Aw
son, that was great, it made me remember just how good the sixties
were” and
I said ”you're
probably younger than me! (laughter)
But the 60s were good…
International Art in Cumbernauld
I heard you went to see Victor Passmore’s work at Peterlee…..
Yes that’s right . again it’s that great democracy of the planner…
We
all got in a van and looked at Durham/Peterlee. Architects draftsmen
planners…I was particularly interested in Passmore…looked
at Durham too because funnily enough they were doing road improvements...
thinking about congestion charges. Various medieval buildings too. There
was a fantastic mix of erudition and enthusiasm on the team.
Then the Arts Council were keen to get a bit of sculpture into the town centre
and we got a bloke called Nicholsa Schoeffer, a Frenchman who did a piece
somewhere in Belgium. An environmental structure which reacted to lights temperature
and climatic changes… I’ve got a Paris-Match somewhere of one
of his towers for Paris bigger than the Eiffel Tower .
He came across, met the various bods, really seduced those guys,…
Asking how much money have they got he said
“ euh, I can do a sculpture of units one meter by one meter, modulair,
you
have
these
factories, Burroughs, they could maybe construct this?’
Y’see he was really great for modular thinking, he did a wee drawing
which i kept in my office but then the cleanerlady came along and cleaned
it away (laughter)
His things were flashing mirrors and lights , a lot of movement…
Tinguely-like?
More structured than that, you would build a tower with arms vanes and sensors,
also able to tell the weather. It would have been a marvellous idea but it
went back and it was something the Arts Council felt they couldn’t
back. I think the maintenance of that stuff at the time- the technology was
unknown..
there were a few artists working in this sort of area.
I did a piece for the Close Theatre, a robot figure in Aluminium, birling
vanes which reacted to the music. Jim Mullen played at the Cottage theatre
and then
at the Close theatre, just plugged his electric guitar in to this 8ft thing,great
fun.
Did you know about people like Billy Kluyver/ Ruaschenberg/EAT?
No, but I had seen a lot of new art in London… because the town was promoting
itself and I was the exhibition designer, I got to go down, and I remember
going
to
the ICA and seeing a pop art exhibition there. I
phoned the Hayward- there was a big UK/US Pop art exhibition, and I said I
was interested in how you display large pieces of art. We got in before the
show started, got to see it all which was amazing.
Claes Oldenburg was great , I really went down the road with him in a sense
that there was a London office- each Scottish New Town took it in turns to
have a
display just off Trafalgar Square- so I did these homages to Claes Oldenburg.
Like an18ft
pocket calculator, giant coloured 35mm slides with back projections on them,
giant pencils, a big cake….a currant bun cake with a screen and 2 projectors
inside, with slices, a big knife…
So the pop art thing lent itself to that, the idea of scale, …I would say
to Bernard who made all the road signs- still lives in the town- “make
me a paper clip that size" and he’d get the aluminium and make it
for me.
.Also
Ron Geesin had done a thing called “domes in the park” he’d
made these cardboard domes which we saw. And a friend Andy Park was by this time
running radio Clyde, he got a letter from Ron asking for places to play… so
he phoned me and we put him on at the Cottage…
Hilarious. Tube playing, playing the piano with bits of coal on it…
Wall panel murals in the Seafar flats
Bison Wallframes were cast through in Falkirk, and I would get a call on
the Monday saying could I have another mural ready for the Friday. I would
take
sheets of polystyrene and take a flame, a torch some metal, and burn it to
cast- thinking in reverse- and this would be taken to Falkirk and placed
in a giant baking tray and they’d pour concrete over it. You wouldn’t
see it until it arrived on the back of a lorry. It would be one of the earliest
units to be placed in as it was an integral building unit and then they’d
put 12 storeys of housing above it…which gave a sense of permanence
to these pieces.
It was there and it wasn’t going to get shifted! This one was done metallic
finish, some with mosaic added…They’re still visible, the colours
may have changed but they’re still there.
The column sculpture
This came out of a conversation with an engineer who did all the bridges
in the town, Ben Allan, all his concrete stuf was great. This was an area
with
this gap… a bit of zadkinn sculpture would look really great in there
and he looked at me and said “there’s some money left in the
contract. Why
don’t you do one?"
I made a Plasticine model, showed it, made it in reverse…engineers always
do their own quantity surveying so they always have a bit more money for the
contract than the architects… who use qauntity surveyors. It was always
a runnimng sore in the office that every new contract they got a new suit,
boots…. Everything was tied in. An engineers contract was a thing to
behold!
Mural painting
I’d like to say that the museum of modern art bought them but sadly…..!
The graphic idea- like the gagrages in Carbrain- was that there would be a
strong and vibrant repeat pattern that the guys from the maintenance painting
department could do by following certain rues- line, reverse curve, repeat,
whatever. And there were some camouflage effects...
I went on site in the morning, each of these garages has a number and the
idea was that as we were painting it they’d put the numbers back. I
went along chalking this design followed by two painters who worked it through.
I worked
out where the exhaust pipes would be so they’d be clean. But the numbers….
Somebody would leave their house in the morning and when they got back there
would be this camouflage- and they couldn’t find where to put their
cars- couldn’t even find the doorhandles sometimes cos of the patterns…We’d
gone on holiday that night in a little schoolhouse in Gatehouse of Fleet
like in the Wicker Man and someone drove out to us and asked me to go to
the phone
and call the paper…
The typing pool had been moved out so there was this large empty office
space . After work Urlan Wannop brought this gossamer covered indoor model
aircraft-
rubber band powered- wound it up and set it off. It flew just as slowly as
you could imagine, and everyone stood against the wall , a room full of people
watching this thing going “thwomp thwomp” - a competitive model
aircraft man…
Architecture from Fritz Langs' Metropolis
Separated pedestrians in 1927…. And Mendelsohns building…very
evocative.
The reconciliation of labour and capital in metropolis;was there thinking
like that in the new town movement?
Yes – and I also think we take for granted the potency of popular culture.
I mean, that metropolis poster is cubism- the sense that popular culture
takes something which is avant garde and turns it to the popular- usable, graspable.
I listened to a lot of Kraftwerk while growing up here.
That’s right.. yes
JGBallard?
Oh yes , I know his work, a big influence.
At that time there was a guy running a course at Strathclyde on contemporary
culture; Andy Park went, I went. We did JG Ballard- the interesting thing
is that all his stories tend to be about enclosure- and then you discover
he was
in a POW camp- or internment camp all those years. And the part at the end
of the war where the cage that had kept people in now kept the starving people
out… I though that was a fantastic image.
What is barbed wire, what does it do, which side of it? Sometimes you should
be on one side, sometimes on the other.
Paolozzi ? Constructivists?
I don’t know… I was aware of Paolozzi, trying to think if that
was an influence in the team… perhaps relating to the massing of
buildings, I’m
sure it was in the air at the time. There was one
ramp in the centre went at right
angles up at the library…it struck me and other people in the theatre
that was the place to do MacBeth- you know , fantastic- it struts straight
out there, counter to the way the rest of the ramps go.
My only claim to fame in the town centre is that I’m probably the only
person that’s cycled up to the top along the penthouses and down while
they were being built. On a Moulton bicycle going up and round the corners
with the bell seing the face of a workman so many feet up in the air and
he hears a bicycle bell…
Drawings of a bright future
Michael Evans did these quite large drawings with a felt tip pen, he rattled
them out .
In a sense he made everything as if it was real- in many cases it never became
what he’d drawn. One of the early ones was that there was no roof,
open to the sky. We soon found out that it rained in Cumbernauld…
He designed some of the the split levels on MacGregor road-
he was an architect as well as doing the illustrations. Ian Stark was another
one
who
did those… They
hated doing them I think. Last time I saw Michael was in Piccadilly Circus …I
had to tell him that one of the houses he had built was falling down, bad
materials– in
about 3 minutes he was on the phone…
Great ability, minimal construction lines, deftness…
I remember the architects designers and teams all did a show based on HMS
Pinafore. They called it HMS Bumbernauld….lots of comments about the
town centre in a Gilbert and Sullivanish style, the people…. We always
look on it as HMS Bumbernauld, as it slowly slipped down.
I was writing a play about the Romans for the community theatre and when
I was doing the research I found that on the site of the Burroughs factory
the
first OS map we bought said “temporary Roman camp” so I checked
the dates. Burroughs only stayed for 25 years. The Romans only stayed for
25 years. Both had eagles on their mastheads…
Later they were in trouble with North Lanarkshire Council and I wrote another
one about the future where all life would be reduced to the battle between
2 supermarkets…
Brian Millers work can be seen at
http://www.publicartofcumbernauld.co.uk/