James Gowan, James Stirling, West Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK, 1956
OfHouses presents “Pritzkers’ First Houses, part V”: We have already featured the first house designed by Kevin Roche (Pritzker 1982), so we jump to the previous year’s laureate. James Stirling (Pritzker 1981) established his first firm in partnership with James Gowan. Historians disagree about the authorship of the first house built by Stirling & Gowan: Was Gowan the sole author? Was Stirling involved in its making? We don’t know the answer to these questions, but our gut feeling says that Big Jim’s hand touched this design in a quite decisive way… (Photos: © Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections.)
