At the age of twelve, Max Gordon declared that he would be an architect when he grew up. At the age of fourteen he joined Portsmouth Grammar School where he was educated well enough for him to get into Cambridge. At the age of 59 he died, having established himself as a pioneering architect in the service of contemporary art. His influence may be seen in art gallery spaces all over the world. 

Max also left behind happy memories of a witty raconteur and much-loved man who kept friends in fits of laughter even while he was dying. His life, work and influence are beautifully highlighted in the book “Architect for Art – Max Gordon” (2010), on which much of this article is based.  

Max’s parents, Sholom and Tania were immigrants, originally from Lithuania. Following marriage and the birth of two children, Amy and Charles, the family emigrated to South Africa where Max and Sidney were born. But, just before the Second World War, the family relocated to England, settling in Garston near Watford.  

Max and Sidney were initially sent to Stanborough School, a Christian school governed by the Seventh-day Adventist church, but the war, with the threat of fascism and antisemitism, appears to have heightened Sholom’s interest in his birth religion. Throughout the 1940s he is recorded as being active within the local Jewish community, culminating in him leading the formation of an Orthodox congregation – the Watford and District synagogue. Sholom served as its first President and Tamara was chair of the Jewish Ladies Guild. It was decided to send Max and Sidney to a Jewish seminary, a decision that brought the boys to Portsmouth.    

Sholom was a successful businessman, and he and Tania were able to employ a nanny to attend to a new son, David, and later to move their family of five children to a large Georgian-style detached house close to Hampstead Heath. A rare diary entry by Max, written in 1945, the year he and Sidney started at Portsmouth Grammar School, reads, “Another boring day. David a perfect pest.” David later wrote, “The entry reveals, besides my pestiness, several Max characteristics: an ability to communicate concisely and directly, and a dislike of inactivity. Its rarity is symptomatic of a reluctance to journalising or introspection.” 

Max and Sidney were sent to Portsmouth as boarders at Aria College in Victoria Road North. This was a college for ten to fifteen boys run by a rabbi who trained pupils, with occasional success, “as Jewish divines on orthodox principles”. The building still stands, the main building as flats and the college synagogue as a garage.  

The boys received their secular day schooling at Portsmouth Grammar School and, after a full day, returned to Aria to learn about Judaism and acquire a working knowledge of Hebrew in preparation for Jews’ College. Max was not happy there. David recalls that Aria left him with a lifelong loathing for religious observance and “anything Jewish other than jokes and food – he cooked excellent latkes. If obliged to go to synagogue he secreted a copy of The Spectator magazine into the prayer book”. 

In 1945, Headmaster Donald Lindsay brought his pupils back from war-time evacuation in Southbourne to Portsmouth, and new pupils, including Max and Sidney, were admitted. The school was in a very poor state, reflecting that of the blitzed city.  The buildings had been occupied by the Royal Navy and fire-bombed by the Luftwaffe. The Lower School had lost its roof, the Senior School had no heating and the Memorial library had lost its books. Mr Lindsay’s study had damp streaming down the walls and, for some time, was largely furnished by fruit boxes. Undaunted, the Headmaster, ably supported by his deputy, Colonel Willis and the school governors, began an ambitious programme of reconstruction and renewal, recruiting well-qualified staff and driving-up academic standards.  

It was in this environment that Max excelled. Like many of the busy Aria students, he was academically bright but took little or no part in school sports. He did, however, serve in the cadet corps as a Lance-Corporal. By the end of his four years at the school he had passed in Art, gained credits in Latin, Maths, Advanced Maths, French, English Language and History and achieved a distinction in English Literature. It is a mystery why Max only managed a “pass” in Art – he was clearly talented, always doodling and sketching. David recalled Max as “a creative young person, drawing, writing and reading widely and even building himself a room in the garden at home where he lived”. But it was English that he intended to read at university - probably encouraged by the school because of that “distinction” - until his sister reminded him of that first love, declared when he was twelve.  

And so it was Architecture at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Max relished the academic study and university social life. A letter sent from Cambridge Old Portmuthians to the school mentions Max and two other OPs as having been spotted taking part in the “Lent Bumps”, the university’s annual winter rowing race that takes place on the River Cam. 

Max was described by contemporaries as “better informed about international developments in architecture than other students or the faculty” and, paradoxically, as “a very social animal while being shy and reserved and a bit uptight”. At that time gay male sex was illegal and the police hunted gay “deviants” who were routinely entrapped, fined and imprisoned.According to Sir Ian McKellan, who was a Cambridge undergraduate at around the same time, the university’s closets were fully occupied. He was “unable to identify one other gay man...we all came out after Cambridge. There were no places you could go...no clubs, societies, no debates about it”.  

Max never came out. According to David, this was not out of fear or shame, but simply because he was a very private person.  

After graduation, Max moved back into the family home in Hampstead and undertook three years of training at the Architectural Association in London. David recalls that at that time “his room was an island of modernity, inspired by the 1951 Festival of Britain”. The Festival had been the Labour government’s “hymn to modernity”, a blast of optimism following the devastation of war, austerity and gloom. On various sites, but centred on the South Bank, it promoted British architecture, the arts, science, technology and industrial design. A few weeks later the Conservatives came into power and demolished it, suspicious of its popular success and meaning.  

Max had a life-long love of the United States and an admiration for American confidence, enthusiasm and can-do attitude. In 1955 he began a Master’s degree at Harvard Graduate School for Design and stayed and worked in New York. He moved back to England in 1962 and, with the help of his financier brother Charles, and Cambridge contacts, became a partner in architectural firms.  His work on the design of New Scotland Yard brought media attention, but he was never happy as a partner in commercial practices.  

By the 1960s Max had begun to take a keen interest in contemporary art, building up his own collection of works by little-known painters and sculptors. His connections and collections grew. In 1971, Vogue featured a photographic spread of him and his Belgrave Square flat. Described as a “glossy and neutral” space, “colour and dynamism” was provided by his impressive modern art collections with works from artists of the pop art movement, including David Hockney.  

In the 1970s, Max became involved with a community of artists that occupied derelict warehouses on the Thames. Over a hundred artists worked there, including the film director and stage designer Derek Jarman. Max’s passion for the arts was such that, by the time he set up his own architectural practice (1981), he had served on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and become a trustee of the Contemporary Art Society. He was a founding member of the Patrons of New Art at the Tate and was credited by its director, Nicholas Serota, as having “conceived the Turner Prize as we know it today, a prize that brought international recognition to British art and to the Tate”. 

Max became known as a specialist in the design of space for the display of art. It was his work on the Saatchi Gallery on Boundary Road in 1983-85 that established him as the pre-eminent architect for art spaces. He converted an old paint warehouse into what one critic described as “one of the most blissful spaces of its kind”. Damien Hirst and his contemporaries found it inspirational, “I remember walking in and going, “Hey, my eyes!” The whiteness of it just blew me away. And it was so not British.”  

Max’s philosophy was a simple one. It was all about the art and not the building that displayed it. His aim was “to design quiet rooms that allow the art to breathe” and to be “enjoyed without distraction”. His spare designs for galleries were replicated around the world.  

Max is known to have had two significant loving relationships in his life. One was with the artist Sir Howard Hodgkin, who celebrated Max in three abstract paintings. But Max, it seems, only fully committed himself to his work.   

The death sentence came in 1983. Max caught what is now called hepatitis-C at a time when treatment was non-existent and recovery unknown. He made full use of the time he had left, designing galleries in the United States and Europe as well as private residences like Bryan Ferry’s apartment in New York and Steve Martin and Victoria Tennant’s house in Beverly Hills.  

In May 1990, his condition had deteriorated but, following massive blood transfusions, he rallied. His doctor asked him if he had any questions. “Yes,” he said, “what’s my estimated shelf life?” Four months later, obituaries in The Times and The Washington Post paid tribute to his life and achievements but, as was the custom of the time, made no mention of AIDS. His death, like so many others in the gay community, is noted, sadly and en passant, in the diaries of Derek Jarman.  

In a personal tribute to Max, the former director of Tate, Nicholas Serota wrote that in the few years that he ran his own practice, Max had “created more superb and enduring spaces for art than many renowned architects manage in a lifetime. He also established a model for handling light and space that has been imitated but rarely equalled by countless others in galleries across the world.”  

Text reproduced from the illustrated article in Opus 25. 

The author is grateful to David Gordon for his helpful correspondence and for permission to draw upon his memoir, “My brother Max” which appears in Architect for Art: Max Gordon (2010).  

The Lindsay Years by P W Galliver, Times obituary 27 Aug 1990, The Portmuthian, British Vogue 15 Sept 1971, “Hanging out in Derek Jarman’s Warehouse” by Glyn Davis, Lux, 6 Sept 2017.