Travels with Bob – opening and book launch
Thursday 19 November 2009, 6:30pm, Forum and Gallery
An evening celebrating Robert Harbison’s new publication Travels in the history of architecture, the opening of Travels with Bob, an exhibition of photographs taken by his wife Esther Whitby, and his first twenty years as a teacher at London Metropolitan University. A series of speakers describe the experience of working and studying with Bob, followed by the opening of the exhibition.
Travels in the history of architecture is published by Reaktion Books. Copies of the book will be available at a discounted price at the opening.
Travels with Bob, a catalogue of the photographs in the exhibition with an introduction by Esther Whitby and an essay by Robert Harbison, is published by Isle of Wight Architecture Press in a limited edition of 300.
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Robert Harbison is no ordinary architectural historian. His command of the apparatus of history is unassailable but he never allows it to mask the true nature of his subject. For him the important thing is the direct experience of the building or work of art. To look at a building with Bob, in the lecture hall, in the pages of his books or out in the city street, is always to see something fresh and immediate. The encounter is never routine or prejudiced. We feel a closeness to the spirit of the work that can be revelatory.
For twenty years now Bob has unobtrusively asserted his intellectual authority in the architecture school at Londonmet, gaining the respect and affection of his colleagues and of generations of students. Now he is nearing retirement it is beginning to dawn on us that he is irreplaceable. But at least we have his new book Travels in the History of Architecture to console us, and to accompany its launch Travels with Bob, an exhibition of photographs taken by his wife, Esther Whitby. In some of these pictures we see Bob at work, in close communion with buildings and landscapes, but we see many other things too, funny and poignant, captured for us by a quick, observant eye.
Colin Davies
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Esther Whitby met Robert Harbison when they were a lot younger than they are now. She was proof-reading an interminable Waverley novel and he, just arrived in this country, was wondering what to do next. After a long working life in publishing, she now enjoys reading for pleasure, watching her grandson grow up, and travelling with Bob.
Robert Harbison has turned his travels into a series of books, beginning with Eccentric spaces (on the imagination), followed by Deliberate regression (on primitivism) and several more including The Shell guide to English parish churches (which involved many hundreds of visits to obscure spots), Reflections on baroque (ranging across four continents) and finally Travels in the history of architecture published this year. He has taught at the Architectural Association and London Metropolitan University for many years, and has lectured widely in all kinds of places, most recently (and enjoyably) in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
About the book
‘Robert Harbison is not one of those historians who tries to blast you out of the water with his authority – his is a gentle voice, full of knowledge and wit, thoughtful and contemplative. As you read this book you feel not that you are being lectured at, but, as the title suggests, that you are travelling in time; and Harbison makes a fine travelling companion. Whatever you are doing with old buildings, whether visiting them, reading about them, looking at pictures of them or even just remembering them, you will want to have this book near at hand.’
Paul Shepheard, author of Artifical Love: A Story of Machines and Architecture and The Cultivated Wilderness
