Nelson's columns.

BUILDING A NEW EUROPE: PORTRAITS OF MODERN ARCHITECTS: ESSAYS BY GEORGE NELSON 1935-1936

London: Yale University Press. 2007. [pounds sterling]30

Paul Nelson (1908-86) was an American architect best known as a furniture designer for Herman Miller. In 1932 he won a scholarship to study at the American School in Rome. While there he interviewed 12 of the leading architects of Europe for the American magazine Pencil Points. Sometimes the American perspective is amazing, such as describing Behrens as the Bertram Goodhue of Europe, but on the whole the interviews are level-headed, and the architects come over very much as human beings caught in difficult situations.

The interest for us is the light it throws on how the architects struggled with the political situation at a time when Fascism was in the ascendancy and before its more bestial side was fully revealed. Nelson, the outsider, writes '... Germany repudiates modern Architecture because it is Bolshevistic, Russia because it is bourgeois, and Italy embraces it because it is Fascist ...'

Naturally, it is the situation in Germany that is most interesting to us. Nelson interviews the Luckhardt brothers and finds 'the office is empty. They have no work. What is more, they can't do any work; it is forbidden by law'. Mies also has no buildings to build, but is described as being 'on the upgrade' under Hitler. Gropius is in London, but is expected to return to Germany.

In contrast the Italian architects he writes about are doing very well. Piacentini gets both admiration and savage criticism for his close ties with Mussolini's regime. Outside the politically charged centre of Europe, Nelson interviews Scandinavian architects who are mildly traditional rather then modern, and he treats them with an admiring simplicity. Britain is represented by Raymond McGrath and by Tecton. The praise given to Tecton for their youth, for their working as a group and for the quality of Highpoint One is fulsome indeed.