Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless

With a body of work firmly in the heart of architectural theory and discourse, Robert Maxwell was a highly regard architect, writer and educator known for critical writing that focuses on modern and contemporary architecture in relation to a wider culture that included art, literature and music.

This exhibition – in the centenary year of Maxwell’s birth – covers sixty years of his writing on transatlantic architectural practice and theory. Like many an Irishman before him, Robert Maxwell moved to Liverpool and hardly looked back. However, his ideas about architecture and the city conceived during his period at Liverpool University and later developed would eventually travel to the city of Dublin and become manifest in the redevelopment of Temple Bar. The exhibition is enlivened by iconic life-size portrait heads by Celia Scott of some of the key figures in post-war architecture who were Maxwell’s colleagues, such as his friend James Stirling.

The exhibition gives insight into the influences and formation of Maxwell’s ideas as well as tracing their legacy. It shows illustrations of some of his early designs and built work, such as his riverside extension to the Royal Festival Hall and Southwood Park flats, as well as other designs for buildings influenced by his ideas. Images, sometimes striking or unexpected, along with quotes are shown form essays such as ‘Continuity in Art and Architecture’, ‘Functionalism and the Avant-Garde’, and ‘Modernity and Post-Modernity’. Clips of filmed interviews with Maxwell conclude the exhibition. 

Celia Scott is an artist and architect whose portrait sculpture revitalised the genre at a time when few artists were doing realistic portraits.

An accompanying exhibition booklet includes essays by Mark Swenarton and Anthony Vidler.