Robin Monotti Graziadei is a man deeply and consciously connected with his own sense of time. But also of timelessness and, as an architect, specifically with that which relates to the built environments of historical civilisations. He tells me with an engaging sincerity that, although impeccably learned in the recognised linear history of art, he sees its unfurling development over millennia in a cyclic, circular motion: ‘Essentially the belief is not that art is a linear process necessarily, but that there’s a point in the past that if certain elements were brought back to today, they would be seen as modern and vice versa’.
I have come to the Westbourne Grove studio of Robin Monotti Architects – a small and serenely immaculate practice – in the wake of its triumph in a competition to design a new drinking fountain for London’s eight Royal Parks – a project appositely steeped in historical allusion (more of which later). His charming and exceptionally pretty wife, Vera Filatova – star of the small screen with roles in shows such as Peep Show, and concurrent director at the practice – opens the door, and introduces me to Monotti, an understatedly dashing Italian count, originally from Rome. And, within moments, the architect’s palpable enthusiasm for his latest commission is evident.
Following the impetus of a donation from the US-based Tiffany Foundation, he regales, the Royal Parks first approached the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to establish a global competition to design a water fountain for the 21st-century – the best examples of which, until now, have traditionally been Victorian. This zeitgeist-catching brief received almost 160 international responses; after all, not only is the project sufficiently out-of-the-ordinary to generate excitement, it represents a pragmatic solution to the very real problem of mountains of water bottles discarded in the parks daily, especially during summer. And astoundingly, says Monotti, at present, only 11 percent of public places are equipped with drinking fountains.
‘We’d never done any kind of fountain before, but we thought: ‘Let’s try,’’ he explains. ‘It was an experiment, there was a sense of: ‘Well, do we know anything about fountains?’ The reality is we didn’t, so we approached it in a different way than we would have done probably if we were experts.’ Indeed; in adherence to Monotti protocol, it was first to the natural world, and then to the past that he looked to get his brain simmering. The concept of sundials kept cropping up by virtue of the fact that they’re similarly open to nature, and with a little investigation, his team happened upon an example dating back to 300 BC – uncovered in 1975 in Afghanistan – which is currently traversing the globe as part of a Kabul Museum travelling exhibition. Though made of limestone, the structure resembled very closely a large concrete slab with a deep sphere embedded in its centre. And, says Monotti, this beautifully simple – almost brutalist – structure spoke both to his team and their collaborator, Mark Titman. ‘It was one of these objects that has remained secret for millennia, and something that’s emerging as our approach is that things that are created a long time ago can actually be considered very modern,’ he explains. ‘The circle is the purest shape, and also there is the connection to infinity. And I think it’s in this circular movement that you can find relaxation – there’s infinite space.’
Monotti wisely ran with the idea, experimenting with the number of spheres that would punctuate the slab of Cornish granite (a material he chose in allusion to the definitively timeless Druid Cornish standing stones), and together the studio settled upon three at different heights, so that the fountain could be accessible to wheelchair users, children and dogs alike.
But, he says, there remained nagging doubts – indeed, so nagging were they that he considered pulling out altogether, fearing people would consider the design ‘alien’, that its primary function wasn’t immediately recognisable. Once, however, the jury pointed out the parallels between the Monotti design and the sculptural work of Barbara Hepworth, an artist so deeply lodged in the collective British consciousness, his worries were allayed, although curiously, it was one link that the Monotti studio had not made. Nonetheless the connection led to some searching questions from the jury. ‘One difficult one was: is this a sculpture from which you drink, or is it a fountain that is sculptural? For us it’s in between the two.’
The winning aspect of the design – which will be installed in May – is that as the person drinks from the fountain, the circles frame a two-way vista; for the drinker the view ahead is encased, while for those looking on, the drinker’s face is similarly framed. It’s little wonder then that the judges – who, after a stalemate, plumped for two local architects, both working within walking distance of the Hyde Park Royal Parks HQ despite the anonymous submissions – described Monotti’s fountain as fundamentally art-led, while the other was considered design-led. Although Monotti’s first love was art – he used to draw endlessly in Rome – he admits to being taken aback at the panel’s assessment. ‘We were surprised, but in some respects we recognised that if we’d taken a designer’s approach, which is to say: ‘How does a fountain look and work?’ we’d never probably have come up with this – although it wasn’t consciously art-lead.’
Fountains aside, Robin Monotti Architects’ stock-in-trade is to resuscitate Victorian homes, blending the new with the old and enjoying the frequently happy synthesis between eras. He tells me that often his builders cannot understand why he wants to, say, hang on to a sweeping Victorian staircase – albeit stripped back to its original stone – if the rest of the house is resoundingly contemporary. But there, he argues, they miss the point. ‘These houses will last a long time, and some of them will have an initial architectural input that retains some Victorian features. We can then restore them like archaeologists to what we think they might have been and add a 2011 feel, so that in 100 years time maybe someone will do a whole new interior and decide to retain some of the things that we did.’
There’s a prevailing sense with Monotti, that his work is not simply about problem solving; he is, rather, a highly intuitive architect, sensitively in tune with both his circular notion of time, and with nature. Fortunately, though, for the denizens of London, these theoretical forays ultimately spurred Monotti to return to the practical application of architecture, which now results in a very sculptural addition to our beloved parks. We’ll drink to that.
Nancy Alsop, in The Hill, May 2011
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