Page:Ian Charlton.ogg/7



Reload page to restart the player. I came home and walked around and I didn't know where to go and I went and called at Hayes & Scott and they made me an offer that was too good to miss. Then it got to the stage after about 3 years, it was obvious that my future there, although we got on well and all the rest of it, it wasn't going to go any higher. Even George Henderson didn't look like ever getting a partnership or anything. So then I had to decide where to go and I wanted to get bigger office experience because in Nutter & Charleton we did these pretty big jobs. Dan was looking after this building I didn't have very much to do with it and that was going on and when I won the Rick award, the travelling award in 1971, I went overseas at the time when they were selecting the architecture to do the competition for the art gallery and while I was over there, I was going to galleries and looking around and everything having in the back of my mind that we might get it. The dirty dogs didn't put us on the list. (Laughter). I could see that with Dan we were doing well and in hindsight I probably shouldn't have gone but I wanted to get some work on bigger jobs and in the end after 15 years at Conrad & Jager I had too much of it. So that's how it all happened.

(Can I again take a step back, when you were in London or in Europe, did you also travel? And did you visit buildings there? No?) Did we ever. Yeah. Well these aren't stories that aren't very relevant to architecture but they are interesting stories. Well when we arrived in London, I had an Aunty there who put us up for a while and so I decided there was enough time before in the summer to do a trip round Europe first and then come back and then in fact then look for a job, you know, it was amazing those days wasn't it you know. You'd think I would have got a job lined up beforehand, I didn't. Got the job and we bought a Lambretta scooter would you believe (laughter). (Your'e not the only one!) Did you have one? (No, no. But Graeme Bligh had one.) Graeme came out after us. Yeah and we told him all about it. Marvellous machine. The first year we took 3 months off and we went to Holland, Belguim, across to Germany, down the Rhine and down through well, we went as far west and Vienna, and down to Rome. Then across to Barcelona, across to Bay Ritz, and then up to Paris and home. That was 3 months. And then the next year, same Lambretta, we did the northern bit. We did, in those days, and I will mention in the books here that Sweden builds and Switzerland builds, they were great mind broadening experience to read these and see about the old architecture, the new architecture, and the background of the town planning and all of the rest of it. So we did Sweden, Norway then down to Denmark, and I tried to get a job in Denmark before we went back to London but it was a bit awkward because no language, they were using metrics, we weren't and I would have been pretty useless so I gave that idea away and that was another 3 months and all the time the whole emphasis was knowing about the buildings or going to offices and saying well what are your important buildings going round these things and all in all, we also went round England, Wales and Scotland and in all we raked up 24 000km on the scooter with very little ... (Amazing, was it miles in those days?) I've converted it for the modern scene.