Theme: Centenary, 1896-1921.
In the early years, The Architectural Review was very much an Arts and Crafts magazine inspired by Pugin and Ruskin. It changed with the zeitgeist to become more devoted to Classical architecture and aware of stirring international developments.The earliest issues of The Architectural Review were large in format and plainly intended to make the discussion of architecture visual as well as verbal. The initial article was the first of a series on the work of the high Victorian Goth John Loughborough Pearson (then in his late 70s) by his pupil John Ernest Newberry, a contemporary of the editor, Henry Wilson.
Other features covered the restoration by Aston Webb of St Bartholomew the Great, the oldest church in London, the work of craftsfolk Nelson and Edith Dawson 'with illustrations by the editor', and the competition for the North Bridge in Edinburgh. This mixture of respect for the earlier generation, and presentation of contemporary buildings, projects, arts and crafts continued for some time. But there were other, less predictable articles: on architecture in Japan by Edward F. Strange (a late echo of the Aesthetic Movement's fascination for Japonaiserie), on Byzantine art by Robert Weir Schultz (a much neglected aspect of history, which Weir Schultz summarised in Lethabean style), and there were rather fay features like 'Reminiscences of a Lincolnshire Stream' complete with photographs of rabbits and a young peewit (charming as this was, it can scarcely have made much contribution to architectural debate). In the first issues, the half tones (reproductions of photographs) were muddy, compared to those in contemporary art magazines. But the line work was good and special perspectives by people like Joseph Pennell, C. E. Mallows and A. N. Prentice have never been surpassed.
When the AR emerged as a separate publication out of the side of The Builder's Journal and Architectural Review (itself launched the year before), the publishing company that owned it was, to say the least, shaky.(1) The business background must have caused much distress on the editorial front. In 1900, the company failed and Wilson resigned.(2) He was replaced by the new proprietors with a committee(3) in which the critic D. S. MacColl was executive editor. At the same time, the magazine was proud to announce in Wilson's last issue that it was 'the only magazine in the British Empire dealing with artistic, as distinguished from the business side, of architecture'(p30).
MacColl increased the breadth of coverage, bringing in more articles about overseas work, widening the coverage of contemporary British architecture and starting a concern with architectural education that lasted for decades. But MacColl was not an architect,(4) and it appears that perhaps he began to fall out with the committee for being too critical: there was for instance a rather acerbic exchange with Macartney over the 1903 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society's show in which MacColl argued that the quality of work was amateurish and Macartney riposted that the critic was unable to judge because he was not an architect (volXII, 1903, p 177). Either because of this, or because the firm had hit yet another financial crisis, MacColl was summarily sacked in February 1904(5) and Macartney was appointed editor, a post he occupied for the next decade and a half.
Under Macartney, the magazine moved with the British profession from being broadly devoted to free-style Arts and Crafts architecture to increasing preoccupation with what we now call Edwardian Baroque and, though free-style work continued in some of the country houses, it was there increasingly eclipsed by the Wrenaissance. In 1906, Macartney introduced a very long-running series, 'The Practical Exemplar of Architecture' which was intended, with photographs and measured drawings, to give architects a universal pattern book, based on the best examples from the past (p33); Renaissance and Neo-Classical detailing predominated, though there were occasionally Gothic examples.
The Exemplar was influential in domestic work, but for examples of urban and commercial work the AR looked abroad, particularly to the US as well as to the huge growth of office buildings in London.
Throughout the first decade of the century, the quality of reproduction improved, and in 1913, Macartney was able to relaunch the AR in a new and very lavish format, with quantities of freely printed whole page photographs (p36) of the great works of a confident Empire. New areas of architectural activity were explored, for instance in 'The Architecture of the Liner' (Vol XXV, 1914, p87) in which Arthur J. Davies urged that ships should be like buildings rather than the other way round as was fashionable 10 years later.
The War cut out such interests. The AR made a task of recording the worst destruction in France and Belgium. A long series of articles on historical war memorials in different countries tolled through the early years of the War. Buildings initiated before the start of hostilities continued to be published, as did those from neutral countries like the Netherlands. There were patriotic articles about the nature of English villages such as Thaxted (p37). In 1917, Macartney re-discovered some of his Arts and Crafts idealism and published articles on how decent working class housing might be created after the War.
The magazine was chosen by the Government to publish the official coloured pictures of the decorations of London for the peace celebrations of 1919.(6) Macartney made a special issue to celebrate the 'Great Peace' in which ideas and plans for the centre of the proposed League of Nations were shown (p38).
"But by this time, Macartney was tired, and he resigned as editor in early 1921, to be replaced by his old friend and fellow Shaw pupil Ernest Newton, who took the post with his son William Godfrey Newton on March 17.
1896
Art and nation
Halsey Ricardo was worried by the brashness of Jugendstil shown in a new German magazine.
One must make allowance for German enthusiasm in locution, and our point of regard is tinged with a kind of superior elderly feeling we look upon the ferment that is apparently taking place in Germany. Nationality still counts for much in our minds. German excesses are not our excesses. We, as craftsmen, are conspicuously sober and restrained in our work; excess of any kind shocks us, and excess that we do not understand, nor see the forces underlying it, repels us forcibly. We have our youthful exuberance, too; our headlong journeys into this and that avenue in the domain of art; but we wait to estimate a man, not by what he has shed, nor the quantity he has to shed, but by what he is after the divestiture. To hear them talk, the German and Englishman are brothers in art; but the contrast in their productions is surprisingly wide. "Find the meaning of things," said Berlepsch, and I turn to his work to see what gospel he has found. Anchored on Nature he proclaims himself to be; but I only see a restless soul, unchained, fretted by the fever in his veins, throwing off the pressure of his activity first in this material and then in that; but in all the various works that come from his busy fingers I seem to hear the cry of a soul that has not found salvation.
Sullivan speaks
The AR printed Sullivan's whole speech - rare European recognition of Sullivan at his apogee.
It is my premise that the Architectural League of America has its being in a sense of discontent with conditions now prevailing in the American malpractice of the architectural art; in a deep and wide sense of conviction that no aid is to be expected from the generation now representing that malpractice; and in the instinctive feeling that, through banding together, force, discretion and coherence may be given to the output of these feelings which are in themselves for the time being vague and miscellaneous, however intensely they may be felt.
Did I not believe that this statement substantially represents the facts, I should be the last to take an interest in your welfare; I would be indifferent concerning what you did or what you did not. That you have abundant reason for discontent needs no proof; let him read that runs through the streets. That you have cause for discontent is evident. That you should feel discontent gives one a delightfully cynical sense of shock, and a new-born desire to believe in the good, the true, the beautiful, and the young.
American architecture is composed, in the hundred, of ninety parts aberration, eight parts indifference, one part poverty, and one part Little Lord Fauntleroy. You can have the prescription filled at any architectural department store or select architectural millinery establishment ...
Try to study a plant as it grows from its tiny seed and expands toward its full fruition. Here is a process, a spectacle, a poem, or whatever you may wish to call it, not only absolutely logical in essence, because exhibiting in its highest form the unity and duality of analysis and synthesis, but which is of vastly greater import, vital and inevitable; and it is specifically to this phenomenon that I wish to draw your earnest attention, if it be true - and I sincerely hope that such is the fact- that you wish to become real architects-not the imitation brand ...
Whenever you have done these things attentively and without mental bias or preoccupation, wholly receptive in your humour, there will come to your intelligence a luminous idea of simplicity, and equally luminous idea of a resultant organic complexity, which, together, will constitute the first significant step in your architectural education, because they are the basis of rhythm ...
I say with emphasis, begin by observing. Seek to saturate your minds by direct personal contact with things that are natural - not sophisticated. Strive to form your own judgments, at first in very small things, gradually in larger and larger things. Do not lean upon the judgment of others if it is reasonably within your power to form your own. Thus, though you may often stumble and wander, such experiences will be valuable because personal; it is far better that they occur in youth rather than in maturer years. Gradually, by virtue of this very contact with things, you will acquire that sure sense of physical reality which is the necessary first step in a career of independent thinking.
But strive not, I caution you, after what is called originality. If you do you will be starting in exactly the wrong way ...
[If the organic approach were pursued] you will smile again when you reflect that it was held in your youth that there was no necessary relationship between function and form: that function was one thing, form another thing. True, it might have seemed queer to some if a pine tree had taken on the form of a rattlesnake, and, standing vertically on its tail, had brought forth pine cones; or that a rattlesnake, vice versa, should take on the form of a pine tree and wriggle along the ground biting the heel of the passer-by.
Yet this suggestion is not a whir queerer than are some of the queer things now filling the architectural view, as, for instance, a steel frame function in a masonry form. Imagine, for instance: Horse-eagles. Pumpkin-bearing frogs. Frog-bearing pea vines. Tarantula potatoes. Sparrows in the form of whales, picking up crumbs in the streets. If these combinations seem incongruous and weird, I assure you in all seriousness that they are not a whit more so than the curiosities encountered with such frequency by the student of what nowadays passes for architecture ...
But I warn you the time left for an answer in the right way is acutely brief. For young as you are, you are not as young as you were yesterday. And to-morrow? To-morrow!
US excess
An unsigned gushy preview of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in complete contrast to Sullivan (below).
The artistic character of the Pan-American Exposition will be one of its strongest features. Everything is going to be so harmonious and pleasing in this respect that the effect of the Exposition as a whole will leave a memory which will be delightful to dwell upon in years to come.
1901
Review re-organised
The company's crash and first editor Henry Wilson's resignation precipitated reorganisation. The departing Wilson took the opportunity to review progress, and to project hopes.
This issue of The Architectural Review completes the ninth volume, and the tenth will see the initiation of various changes and improvements which have engaged the careful attention of the proprietors for some time past. The first of these is a change in the editorial regime.
The Architectural Review is the only magazine in the British Empire dealing with the artistic, as distinguished from the business, side of architecture. From the first its object has been to express, as directly as possible, the ideas of architects themselves about their art, and to illustrate good contemporary as well as older work. The object of our new scheme is to put the editorial control of articles and illustrations in the hands of a committee of architects. No one man, at the present time, can represent all the ideas fermenting in architecture and the allied arts, but it is hoped that the Committee, whose names are given below, includes the desirable variety, and will carry the necessary authority.
The proprietors, then, are gratified to be able to announce that the following gentlemen have kindly come forward at their invitation and formed themselves into an advisory editorial committee, which will, in future, direct the policy of the magazine:-
Mr R. Norman Shaw, R.A.
Mr John Belcher, A.R.A., F.R.I.B.A.
Mr Frank T. Baggallay, F.R.I.B.A.
Mr Reginald Blomfield, M.A.
Mr Gerald C. Horsley
Mr Mervyn Macartney
Mr D. S. MacColl, M.A.
Mr E. J. May
Mr Walter Millard
Mr Ernest Newton
Mr Edward S. Prior, M.A.
Mr Halsey R. Ricardo
Professor F. H. Simpson
Mr Leonard Stokes, F.R.I.B.A
The next three numbers will carry out the ideas of the Committee so far as existing arrangements permit, and full control will be established in the October number.
Concurrent with the alteration in the editorial direction there will be a change of another kind. The price of the Review will be reduced to sixpence, so as to bring it within the range of a larger number of students of architecture, professional or amateur.
Care will be expended on printing and reproduction as well as on illustrations and articles. During the four and a half years of its existence the "Review", in the judgment of its contemporaries, has reached a high standard in all these matters. The opinion was recently expressed by Literature, that "the magnificent appearance of The Architectural Review is bound to increase the public respect for architects;" it is the hope of the proprietors that the new series will win from a wider public an intelligent interest in architecture.
In conclusion, the retiring editor desires to thank readers and contributors for many courtesies, and the public for the increased measure of support accorded to the magazine while under his temporary direction.
Education?
British architectural education was plainly not working. This was the first of many articles published in the next two decades.
The Englishman's belief in happy-go-lucky methods has lately received some rude shocks in results that were neither happy nor lucky. It is established now that battles may be lost on the playing-fields of our public schools, and that even Waterloo was not won there; that the manoeuvre for a "muddle" or a "mess" in the sure and certain hope of genius punctually declaring itself to clear up is dangerous when an empire depends upon the wager, and that a systematic neglect of system is only one kind of pedantry. The suggested remedy of entrusting our affairs to "business-men" can hardly be listened to with a grave face when we find those same business-men confessing that they are outpaced in energy and outwitted in combination by the foreigner they were accustomed to despise. The average "business man" is as hollow a person as the average "artist." It seems admitted on all hands that it may be desirable to devote to military and commercial affairs something of the study, training, and keenness that we give at present to sport. Energy and independence we have in abundance, but we are too fond of living from hand to mouth, too disdainful of systematic professional schooling.
If South Africa, Germany, and America have been teaching us these lessons in public and commercial affairs, the chaotic state of architectural design sharpens the question whether here, too, the conditions of education are not partly to blame. Art is not, to the same extent as war or business, a pursuit in which great numbers of the average man must and can be drilled to perform subordinate and half-mechanical services, and to a greater extent than these it depends on original combining and creative power. But this power, when it exists, calls for drilling in two respects. Architecture is science made art; a knowledge of the principles of construction is a first necessity of the architect, and modern architects ought to be ashamed of the fact that "engineer" and "architect" seldom mean the same person. But the decorative as well as the constructive sense calls for training. "Originality" in design is the merest weed, and must be grafted on the old stocks and pruned if any fruit is to come of it. Genius itself must learn its use and the conduct of its forces from a study of the past.
In England we maintain for architects relics of a medieval system of training stripped of its severe sanctions. No one is forced to be a prentice before he calls himself an architect, and the amount of practical training a prentice obtains depends too much on the chances of his own industry, and his teacher's conscience or leisure. Yet there are advantages in this early practical office-training that it would be rash to imperil by hasty action. For theoretical and historical training the student must turn to one or more of those schools that have sprung up to supplement the traditional system. But unless the prentice system is relaxed, this study has to be carried on in the evenings, after hours ...
1905
Garden City ...
A report by the editor on Letchworth, the first Garden City.
Scepticism and cheap sneers at "philanthropy at five per cent" have been followed by confidence. As Mr. G. K. Chesterton truly pointed out not long ago, there is nothing freakish whatever about the conception of Garden City. All cities grow up round a definite object, be that object a temple, or a racecourse, or whatever it may be. Garden City, therefore, which is springing up round the idea of the promotion of social improvement, so far from being a wild fantasy is simply pursuing a normal development ...
It will be noticed what especial importance is attached to a large and airy living room. The Garden City authorities, indeed, are extremely keen on this feature, and in this respect they will perhaps encounter a certain amount of opposition. The love of the artisan class for a separate "parlour," be it ever so small, is well known, and it remains to be seen if they will cheerfully acquiesce in the new and beneficial arrangement. Next door, we may note, is another similar cottage by the same builders and architect, which contains less woodwork, but which has the old-fashioned weather boards with brackets over the windows.
... City Beautiful
The American City Beautiful movement (basically Beaux Arts) began to attract much attention.
San Francisco having grown enormously in commerce and population during the past decade - owing to her trade with the Orient, the development of her natural resources, and her general pre-eminence as the chief port of the Pacific - an improvement in her architectural and topographical embellishment was generally demanded.
Under the leadership of James D. Phelan and many prominent and wealthy citizens the Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco was formed on January 15, 1904. Realising the artistic possibilities of a city of hills so favoured by situation and climate as San Francisco, the Association announced as its main objects the beautifying of the streets, public buildings, parks, and places, the study of the best methods for instituting municipal improvements, the stimulation of civic pride in private property, the encouragement of quasi-public enterprises, and the advancement of all that might help to make this the most beautiful and modern of all cities.
Exemplary
Macartney instituted the Practical Exemplar series as an aid to education.
In this number of The Architectural Review we make a new departure by publishing the first plates of our "Practical Exemplar of Architecture". To be frank with our readers, our intention is by photographs and measured drawings to place before architects an absolutely reliable and correct reproduction of all that pertains to the practice of architecture, so that any architect, or for that matter anyone, could reproduce any given subject, from a chimney-stack to a door-knob. It is not intended that the host of adapters should be increased so much as to ensure that the adaptations should be correct. It is for the use of those who want to study examples of the masters in architectural design and construction, and to show them how these problems have been approached, and in many cases mastered. The dull copyist will exist under any circumstances; we cannot eliminate him, but we can provide him with "pot-hooks" that are worth imitating. Though not our aim, still it will be a consolation to know that under the worst aspect we shall not be lowering the standard. As regards the more practical side of the question, the plates will, as far as possible, be printed free from letterpress ... This venture has not been attempted in any country as yet, and we should value any assistance that young architects can give us in connection with the illustration and measuring of architectural details. We want to show by photographs and actual measurements the appearance and method of construction of any of the details.
Art Nouveau attacked
The British may have thought German Jugendstil excessive (p28), but the freakiness of Art Nouveau seemed ridiculous.
The whole scheme is monumental, more by reason of fine planning than from particular artistic merit, and there are places where the critic is obliged to be content with the explanation that exhibition buildings are structures of a peculiar and ephemeral kind, and therefore the architect need not take himself altogether seriously ...
But it does not prevent us from noticing (and unhappily this applies to most of the buildings) that in the detail there is sometimes a tendency to introduce incongruous and unlovely ornaments mixed with a reprehensible degeneration into the lowest depths of "l'Art Nouveau". It is not denied that railway buffers have their uses when properly applied to rolling stock, but they are not things of beauty, and are out of place on the voussoirs of an arch. They resemble nothing so much as colossal shirt-studs embedded in the plaster. Nor is the detail of the courtyard to be greatly admired with its square and slender coupled shafts divided into square blocks and surmounted by debased Ionic capitals from which the abaci are wanting ...
Probably the most striking sign of progress made in the last decade is the Palazzo dell'Automobilismo, or Motor Car Exhibit. When we recollect that less than ten years ago such a thing as a motor car was unknown, it is astonishing to see this huge building, consisting of a central hall and galleries enclosing four large courts, filled to its utmost capacity with a multiplicity of exhibits connected with this trade of mushroom growth.
1911
Urban choices
The nature of urbanism was as important a subject in the first years of this century as it is now.
Mr. Raymond Unwin, F.R.I.B.A., at the Architectural Association on October 16th, read a very interesting paper on this subject [town planning: formal or irregular]. He first pointed out that those who said the town plan should consist entirely of straight streets and square places symmetrically arranged upon axial lines quite ignored both the economic necessities and the great architectural opportunities which spring from the fact that the site upon which the plan is to be carried out has in England, in nine cases out of ten, an undulating surface, and embraces many marked features of an irregular character. On the other hand, those who maintain that because the site consists of hills and hollows, and is marked by winding streams and devious highways, uplands with ragged edges, and the random boundary lines of private properties, it is therefore unnatural and out of harmony with the site to plan straight streets or lay out symmetrical groups of buildings, seem to neglect altogether the legitimate function of human design and the application of architectural principles natural to a work so intimately connected with architectural expression as that of town planning.
Unless the extreme formalist is prepared to depend upon gigantic feats of engineering to provide for him a sufficiently formal stage for the display of his design, however formal he may make it on the paper plan, many sites will play pranks with the lines of his elevations. In fact, if we are to obtain any success, we cannot think of town planning as the creation of a pattern in two dimensions, but must necessarily think of it in three. The formalist will admit that on an undulating surface many of his straight lines will always be seen as curves, and Mr. Unwin could not conceive any valid reason why the lines should not be curved on plan if by so doing a horizontal line for the elevation can be secured.
Perhaps the essential fallacy of the irregular school is the idea that the free exercise of fancy uncontrolled by any precision of purpose or law of proportion is the natural basis for the highest type of design in all branches of human activity ... To maintain that no one is competent to compose, either in the form of buildings or in the field of town planning, on a symmetrical line, that the beauties of proportion and relation can only be displayed when axially planned, seemed [to Unwin] a proposition which is amply disproved by many of the most beautiful buildings, streets, and places which have resulted from the work of the greatest periods of the past ...
Still, of course, there are limitations. It might be true that the steep straight street leading over the top of the hill would make an excellent basis for a formal scheme, but if every cyclist has to dismount and push his machine up that hill, and every driver to walk his horse with difficulty down the other side, the purpose of convenient access will hardly have been satisfied ...
Summing up, Mr. Unwin said he believed that town planning should be formal, using the word in a broad sense and always remembering that there are limits set by the useful purposes that the plan must provide for, and by the nature and opportunities afforded by the site.
Skyscrapers
The skyscraper was a building type that transfixed the world.
It is as architect of the Woolworth Building - "the highest building in the world" - now in course of erection in Broadway, New York, that public attention is at present directed towards Mr. Cass Gilbert ...
With popular interest in building, there follows a growing interest in architecture, and having settled that the Woolworth Building will be a "record-breaker" for height, and in other respects, the question that the public raises is whether a building of such form can be beautiful - can the artist rise to it? Perhaps at no other time during the very remarkable career of the architect has the public finger pointed so directly as at present to Mr. Cass Gilbert with the accusative interrogation: "You did it, but is it art?" And so it will continue to ask until the building is completed. The critics have had their way and have formulated public opinion; and the limelight focuses upon something greater than that which, for the time being, occupies the centre of the boards.
A new Review
Mervyn Macartney explains the new role of the AR as a bridge between profession and public.
In this first number of a new series of the Architectural Review it is considered appropriate to offer a few words of explanation for the alterations which have been made in its size and form.
It is eighteen years since the Review was started. From the commencement its aim has been to represent the highest achievements in architecture and the allied arts, and as a result the Review has attained a paramount position; the high esteem in which it is held being a source of gratification alike to the Editor and to the Proprietors.
Of late years an increasing interest in architecture has been evinced by the educated section of the general public, in view of which it has been felt that a still wider field was open to the Review, and that by the introduction of such subjects as furniture, decoration, garden design, sculpture, etc, its value would be considerably enhanced.
The appeal of the Review has thus become more and more a dual one - to the architect professionally as one practising a great art, and to the educated layman able to appreciate the best work of architects and craftsmen.
It has been thought that this dual representation would be materially assisted by an alteration in the size of the pages of the Review, so that there might be more space at the disposal of the Editor ...
In its new form the Review will be able to deal with architecture and the kindred crafts in a manner never before attempted, thus fulfilling to an even greater extent than before the obligations of its unique position; so that, besides representing the strictly professional side as the foremost magazine for architects, it will appeal to that great number of the lay public who, although in no way professionally associated with architecture, are, at the same time, keenly interested in the subject.
1914
War work
Almost as soon as war broke out, architects were in difficulty.
In conjunction with the Architects' Benevolent Society and representatives of the Architects' and Surveyors' Approved Society, the Benevolent Sub-committee of the Architects' War Committee are considering a scheme for joint action for the relief of distress among architects which may arise in consequence of the war. A scheme for finding employment has been adopted in principle by the SubCommittee. This scheme may be described shortly as a proposed inauguration of civic surveys of all the larger cities. The surveys are to cover the following ground: Archaeological, social and recreative, educational, hygienics, commercial, traffic, valuation. The idea is to provide complete data upon which to base town-planning schemes. An additional scheme is also being prepared which is based on the original proposals made by the society of Architects-the measurement of buildings of historical and architectural interest etc.
Post-war hope
A major conference on post-war rebuilding found that, broadly, traditional building methods could be used to make Britain fit for heroes.
The members of the conference are satisfied that if 300,000 houses are to be erected in one year the organizing ability and energy of at least half of the employers in the building trade will be needed, and the labour of not fewer than 400,000 workmen will be required for the accomplishment of the task.
The same proportion applies to the subsidiary trades engaged in the production of building materials, for at least half of the productive energy available in normal times will be needed to supply the materials to build these houses.
In prison
Education continued for POWs.
At Ruhleben alone, classes are being carried on for about fourteen hundred students by about two hundred professors and teachers, and examinations have been actually held in the camp, and the results accepted by the Board of Trade and the University of London.
Eternal values
In contrast to the mud and blood of Flanders, the AR looked to the traditional English rural Arcadian idyll.
There is a subtle and scarcely recognized difference between such a village and the modern garden city. The one, of slow growth, clear on the face of it, belongs entirely to the current necessities, expressing the Adam-like wrestling with the soil or the elements, and yet clothed withal in a seemly and pleasant guise. The other is fungus-like, dumped down anywhere, with at best a factory as a nucleus, producing something entirely alien ...
It is worse than useless to attempt to imitate the age-long growth of these ancient places, which have come down to us as precious heirlooms, and should be preserved for the benefit of future generations as a national heritage. The greatest effort should be made by the Government to secure such villages from further destruction by public or private owners. Nothing in the way of alterations or additions should be allowed without the consent of a competent authority. It should be made known widely that these villages are as valuable a national asset as the pictures and other works of art preserved in our galleries and museums ...
The problem that will have to be faced in the near future is how to preserve these villages and yet utilize them to the fullest extent for a modern population who have moved out on to the land. The agriculturist with his steam, petrol, or electric ploughs and reaping machines will not only need new buildings, but in these out-of-the-way places he will require all the attractions of a town, as far as social life is concerned, because he will have more leisure at his command.
1919
Vision of peace
Locating and designing the home of the League of Nations.
In the home of a League of Nations, associations would be formed that would stimulate the whole world, that would redress its inequalities, that would produce that balance between peoples which is essential if interrrational stability is to be maintained. Here new markets will be created and old businesses stimulated; here industrial conditions will be improved, and backward nations brought into line with those which are up-to-date. Here the result of scientific research, with its investigation into materials, will be available to all. Here the development of the international protection of labour will stabilize production and make possible on a broader and freer basis that great fabric of international trade upon which the ultimate prosperity of the world must rest. These are practical considerations which may appeal and convince, where arguments from history and to sentiment bring no conviction.
The site has been chosen. It is Geneva. There will be critics - that is inevitable. Other sites could be suggested. What are the conditions that should govern selection? First: The site could not be inside the territory of any of the Great Powers. Second: it must be central. Third: It must be attractive. From the historic and supremely idealistic view, Jerusalem might have been chosen. Centrally placed as it is between the three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe, under perhaps the special protection of America, it would be an ideal place. But the time has not yet come when Asia and Africa have reached the standard of material progress which is found in Europe. In those days, Jerusalem may have been the centre of the whole earth.
Constantinople, the great meeting-point of East and West, has been suggested; but the considerations which ruled out the Holy City are scarcely less strong here.
Belgium, the great scene and centre of the world's struggle through which we have passed, has a special appeal; but it is, perhaps, not to be regretted that the home of the League of Nations will not be in a country which for generations to come must be surrounded with an atmosphere of sadness and sorrow.
Geneva has many qualifications. There are surroundings of great natural beauty. With the mountains as background, the waters of the lake as foreground, you have the same setting that gave the Greek cities their charm, It is, moreover, in a land where, on a small scale, a union has already been achieved of three great people of Europe, who there dwell in amity, the French, Germans, and Italians. Most of all, perhaps, it is a place of happiness, a place of welcome, where men from every land have consorted for pleasure and recreation. It has an atmosphere, in these days, of rest, and the kindliness that goes with leisure. Centuries ago Calvin aimed to make it the city of God; and if he failed with narrowness of vision, it may be that the ideal he set before him will yet be achieved, and that Name which stands for Oneness be honoured in a city where men shall resort to compose their differences, to remember their common life, to associate in co-operation for the world's welfare.
It would need an Apocalypse to present a vision of this city. It needs be that the mantle of the seer should fall upon us all, and that those who profess and call themselves architects should seize this opportunity to proclaim the place and worth of the object of their pursuit in the eyes of the world, and see to it that those who set up this city shall set it up in the spirit of that decree with which this article opened, "that no public works shall be begun unless with the intention of making them correspond to the great soul made up of the souls of all the citizens, united in one will."
1 Some notes on the business history of the magazine are given on p 102.
2 He continued the architectural practice he had inherited on Sedding's death and increasingly devoted himself to sculpture and craft work: designing for instance the bronze doors for the Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York and being the first designer to use electric batteries to make jewellery sparkle (his more conventional jewellery was, and is, much sought after).
3 Initial members were Norman Shaw, John Belcher, Reginald Blomfield, Edward Prior, Mervyn Macartney, Frank T. Baggallay, Gerald Horsley, E. J. May, Walter Millard, Ernest Newton, Halsey Ricardo, F. H. Simpson, Leonard Stokes, H. H. Statham (editor of the Builder's Journal), D. S. MacColl (editor AR and sub-editor J. H. Elder Duncan). Shaw (then an old man) rarely attended. Belcher was Wilson's master, and in 1884 the chairman of the first meeting of what became the Art Workers Guild (AWG), the prime focus of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Prior, Macartney, Horsley and Newton were all pupils of Shaw and, with Lethaby, had set up the AWG. Almost all the initial contributors were members of the Guild: Wilson became Master of the AWG in 1917.
4 All the other editors have had at least some training as architects, and most have been members of the profession.
5 His private papers show that he was surprised by the event, and Blomfield, for one, wanted to keep him and increase his salary. See D. S. MacColl by Maureen Borland, Lennard Publishing, Harpenden, 1995, p155. Both Blomfield and Belcher resigned from the committee over the matter. Looking back, MacColl believed that the committee's 'most glaring omission was that of Lutyens' designs' (ms note from MacColl to Pevsner n.d., at present in the possession of the AR).
6 The peace treaty was complete in draft in May 1919 and was signed by Germany in June.
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| Title Annotation: | architecture |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Architectural Review |
| Date: | May 1, 1996 |
| Words: | 6636 |
| Previous Article: | Can German planning work? |
| Next Article: | Theme: Centenary, 1935-1951. |
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