PD and the AR; Without me knowing, my colleagues commissioned this article from one of our most prolific, experienced and insightful contributors. He describes the last 25 years of the AR from the outside (almost): I owe him many thanks. PD.

Peter Davey established his editorial skills on the AJ before moving on to the AR in the late 1970s, but it was not until the issue of December 1980 that he became Managing Editor. The magazine had somewhat lost its way, cowed by the onset of Post-Modernism and split by bickering and soul-searching among its various editors. Lance Wright had tried bravely to take on the crisis with a series of leaders and correspondence in 1976-77 asking 'What is Architecture?', but this just further exposed the ideological void. By the end of the decade, he was ready to hand on the torch, and he blessed his successor with a long and generous review of Arts and Crafts Architecture, the book that Peter had assembled while working as Executive Editor on the AJ. Published initially by the book division of Architectural Press and later by Phaidon, it remains the standard work. Wright noted that, 'though there is no lack of footnotes and references, this is the book of a man interested in the politics of architecture ... Arts and Crafts was an approach to building ... conceived as a collaborative act in which free men (the architect and the different sorts of craftsmen) came together to give the client his building. Everybody's contribution was conceived as art, the subject of personal interpretation.' (1) Relaying Peter's story of how the movement had died, Wright attributed to him the idea that 'Classicism in any form is always the mark of the beast' and hinted that the Arts and Crafts approach might be revived. (2)

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Rich and varied

Did we get a craft-obsessed and anti-Classical editor? Not at all. Peter's evident sympathy for Ted Cullinan and Peter Zumthor (3) reflects this background, but it never obstructed his appreciation of a much wider range of things. The first year of his reign was extraordinarily rich and varied. He assembled a young and enthusiastic editorial team--Peter Buchanan, Dan Cruickshank, Jonathan Glancey and Lance Knobel and let them pursue their enthusiasms. (4) His first leader did not declare a new direction, but extolled the virtues of sensitive rebuilding of housing in Cologne by Schurmann. The vivid green cover showed a Grimshaw factory. Inside were Dixon's St Mark's Road housing and a report on the Canberra Parliament. This catholic selection of material continued over following months, including architects such as Stirling, Ungers, Meier and even Philip Johnson, and the magazine stood in the forefront with reports on Lloyd's and Honkers & Shankers as projects. Peter did not baulk at allowing Michael Graves the cover, nor did he curb Cruickshank's enthusiasm for Quinlan Terry. There were history articles on Plecnik, Hohenhagen and Lutyens, and Jonathan Glancey discovered Makovecz. Peter Cook was commissioned to write a series on 'unappreciated architects'.

The AR competition for a jewellery shop numbered Eva Jiriena among the winners. Book reviews continued, but the correspondence pages became more lively, for Peter printed criticisms, retorts and even insults. Within months there were also enthusiastic letters from readers applauding the new direction. All this in the first year, and not till October did Peter sign another leader. Titled 'The Political Angle', it argued vigorously against art for art's sake, reminding readers that 'architecture can never be divorced from social and political concerns' (5) which expresses the tenor of his whole editorship. The work illustrated was a new metro station by Lucien Kroll which Peter admitted might 'seem chaotic and confusing. But then so, of course, are people.' (6)

Serving architecture

Even at that early stage the strengths of a great editor were evident: broad tastes but a discriminating eye, and a great talent for spotting potential contributors and contributions. He has not been too dominant, and he does not interfere or rewrite unnecessarily. One's copy is tweaked here and there, but nearly always for the better, and when cuts are made, he never leaves bleeding wounds. He allows experiment, but always with a lightly guiding hand. It was clear from the start that he saw his first duty as serving architecture and the reader, promoting understanding and providing criticism. Editor also meant being manager and having to deal with money, but for Peter business is at the service of ideas, not vice versa. The current wisdom that if you can make more money for shareholders by selling potatoes, you do so from tomorrow, was anathema to him. Yet when he took the editor's chair, Thatcher was in power and the economy all. Business ideology was creeping into every corner of life and has continued inexorably to do so--worse still under Blair, it must be said (PFI and so on). Peter has fought all this with unrelenting vigour, even while he has also had to prove that the magazine could pay its way.

It has been harder than he could ever have dreamed. At the start the Architectural Press was a business owned by the Hastings and Regan families out of personal interest and it was committed wholly to publishing architecture, but the families lost interest and in 1987 sold out. Robert Maxwell and his minions asset-stripped the firm mercilessly, selling off the books division and disposing of the offices in Queen Anne's Gate, and as a final insult even raiding the staff pensions.

After Maxwell fell off his boat, the AR and AJ were bought by Emap, a large commercial publisher with little sense initially of what a subscription-based magazine like the AR was or how it worked. As the keen wind of business competition began to bite, Peter had constantly to defend his corner and to watch his sales figures, to fight off the clamour for more advertising, and to maintain editorial integrity while writing more and more in-house to save money. The strain did not show too much, and he was able to keep the show on the road because subscriptions and advertising increased, providing the required rise in profit. While other architectural magazines wobbled and fell by the wayside, the AR increased its international reputation largely thanks to the imagination, consistency and integrity of Peter's policy. Its coverage remained catholic and the quality of writing high, so that it became regarded abroad as the international review. For architects, publication in it means having arrived, and in the academic research stakes it is regarded as the equal of any refereed journal.

Looking back across the 1980s and 1990s, the AR is a worthy chronicle, catching the prevailing styles and obsessions with visual panache and hosting a debate from a remarkably long and distinguished list of contributors: almost a Who's Who in architectural writing. Many articles are still worth reading, and among the buildings featured there is remarkably little dross, if much that has dated. Peter kept it lively over a quarter of a century despite the monthly treadmill, for there were constant innovations: AR Detail, the Aga Khan Awards, Emerging Architecture, Outrage and Delight, to mention just a few. When The Prince stuck his oar in, Peter responded boldly with a 'Primer' to put him right. There were supports for underdog 'isms' like Expressionism, Organic and Green, and unsuccessful attempts to coin new ones such as Romantic Pragmatism and The New Spirit. And a balance was kept: High-Tech was well served, but only the better Foster projects were aired, and not without criticism. Intimidation was resisted, as when Calatrava tried to bully his way onto the front cover, and Peter simply published his letter, refusing to have anything more to do with him. An undeservedly painful moment for Peter was the furore unleashed by the Letter from Ramallah. (7) The correspondence went on for months with extreme feelings on both sides, but those who demanded that architecture be kept out of politics were wrong: it is always and inevitably political, and destruction is the converse of construction.

Defining the field

We all take the AR too much for granted. We dispute the opinions expressed and what should be in or out of it, but we nonetheless expect it always to be there, like The Guardian or the BBC. It doesn't have to be, for it could easily be killed by an unsympathetic proprietor, a fall in subscriptions, or less dramatically simply by succumbing to commerce and the lowering of editorial standards. It would be almost impossible to restart, for it depends on a supportive audience, which once dispersed would be impossible to reassemble. Its editors of the mid twentieth century--Pevsner, Richards, Banham--turned out also to be the key historians, and for better or for worse the AR in their time was a defining instrument in the development of architecture and its history. The same is becoming true of the Davey editorship, for the AR of the 1980s and '90s is a first port of call for students trying to make sense of that period. We always argue about interpretation and the relative standing of works, but the AR as primus inter pares serves to define the field, and it does so according to a long tradition which Peter has upheld with consummate commitment and unswerving integrity.

Peter has written rather more of the AR than he lets on, leaving thorny problems of attribution for future historians. Henry Miles, for instance, is a dead ringer for Peter. Odd then, that after the editor had apparently happily accepted my article on one of Klaus Kada's cooler creations, it was Henry Miles who wrote in to protest. Later, an Elizabeth Miles too appeared in AR and I remarked to Peter that Henry seemed to have acquired a wife. 'She's his sister', he retorted.

(My own connection with AR began with the issue of March 1975 and was sporadic until the Organic special issue I guest-edited in June 1985, since when I have contributed more or less constantly.)

1 AR December 1980, p385.

2 Ibid.

3 Following the award of the Carlsberg Prize to Zumthor in 1998, Peter Davey wrote a short celebratory monograph on his work.

4 This tradition continued with E. M. Farrelly, Frances Anderton, Penny McGuire, Gathy Slessor and Rob Gregory.

5 AR October 1981, p204.

6 Ibid.

7 AR May 2002.