HUMANITIES

HRITIKA VILASRAO JAGATP

REPORT 2 THIRD YEAR SEM 5
FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS: ROLL NO. 12
ARCHITECTURE IN INTER-WAR BARC 505
ENGLAND
VIVA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
DATE: 29-6-2021
BARC 505 REPORT-2 HUMANITIES

FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS: ARCHITECTURE IN INTER-WAR

ENGLAND

Simon Thurley (Professor of Built Environment)

First World War has demolished the Victorian are by killing more than millions of people.
Two World Wars shook the nation producing the seemingly contradictory response of
nostalgia and modernity. Huge expansion of the suburbs, massive growth of motoring and
a conflicting discussion about how England should look in the future took place.
Modernism and the Avant Grade, cultural feature of France, Germany or Russia played a
role in inter war Britain and the Arts and Crafts movement was normalized. Battle was
fought between:

 Traditionalism versus modernism

 Internationalism versus vernacularism
 Internationalism versus indigenous culture
 Renovation versus conservatism
 The industrial versus the pastoral
 The functional versus the futile.

Debate about the possibilities to ‘go modern’ and still ‘be British’ took place. Modernism
was seen to embrace new materials and innovative technology, abstract non-
representational forms and minimal decoration.

Example: Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, known as the Isokon

Building designed by Welles Coates (Engineer). Modernism was
one choice and the alternative was the historical styles.

During First World War Tudor style was prominent. The famous
books written on Tudor architecture during renaissance in England
were:

 J. Alfred Gotch (1901)- Early Tudor Architecture

 Thomas Garners ( 1911) - The Domestic Architecture of England

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Tudor mania led to the restoration of many houses, Ightam Mote and Sissinghurst in Kent;
Ockwells in Berkshire; Athelhampton in Dorset and Avebury in Wiltshire, are just a small
important Tudor projects of the period 1910-1939. A few new houses like Bailiffs court in
Sussex by Amyas Phillips for the Hon. Work of Sir Christopher Wren was admired during
1800, but later peoples’ taste turned against Wren.

Again there was growth in his appreciation after

publication of his first biography by James Elmes. Gothic
revival style drifted to something more English. Kinmel Park
in Denbighshire is the first house inspired by Hampton
Court’s calm classifying influence on English architecture in
the period 1860-1930. The house was a pioneer of the
Queen Anne movement and was built for H.R. Hughes.

The architecture of Wren, gave birth to a spectrum of public and private buildings led by
a group of Edwardian ‘Wrenaissnace’ architects working in his style. Few buildings listed
are:

•Moundsmere house in Hampshire (1908-9)

for Wilfred Buckley

•Stanstead Park, Sussex (1900) by A. C.

Blomfield

•Bentalls store, Kingston by Sir Aston Webb

•Peabody Estate at Cleverley, Hammersmith

(1928) by Victor Wilkins.

Buildings repeat its style and elements which are inspired by Hamptons Court. Just as
contemporary architects rediscovered Wren’s architecture so did they followed interiors
fashionable again. Interest in Tudor and 17th century architecture was obsession of every
class from upper to middle class, but one very mixed up with a newly found passion for
the countryside. Later urbanization after First World War turned towards countryside style.
Suburbs tried hard to be villages, in layout, road names, in architecture, gardens, open
space and planting. Pubs, Tea shops, cafes and petrol stations were designed to look
village.

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The countryside was a crowded area. During the First World War 331 Stage Bus operators,
by 1930 there were 3,962 and by 1932 busses carried more passengers than the rail
network. Even explosion of car membership took place.. In 1918 there had been no more
than 100,000 private motor cars, but by 1939 there were two million.

The internal combustion engine took people to places that railways and even motor buses
could not. The countryside and its monuments were now, for the first time, permeable to
almost everyone. New category of architecture was building for motor car emerged very
strongly after 1914, 29 motor showrooms were constructed. The most splendid was the
HQ of Wolseley designed by Curtis Green in 1922. Traditional structures did start giving
way to showrooms in a modern style in the 1930s.

Before the second war, large car parks were built in seaside towns, city centers, at railway
stations and at entertainment venues. After 1918 the first ramps was introduced in
garages, which was cheaper to run, faster to operate and more reliable.

Bluebird garage - Kings Road, London designed by Robert

Sharpe in 1923 is also an early example of a commercial
car park with pumps on the forecourt. But later it was
realized that staggered ramp system would be cheaper and
faster to operate. Ramps were almost universally used for
multi-storey car parks and was introduced from America,
first in Poland Street Soho London in 1922. During the 1930s there began to be much
greater standardization in car manufacture and modern-style garages began to be more
favored.

Garden city invented by a single man Ebenezer Howard, wanted to design a new type of
place to live based on the model industrial villages such as saltire built by the industrialist
Sir Titus. The first to be built was Letch worth garden city then Hampstead garden Suburb.
These housing developments presented a view of England and English architecture that
was essentially rural, vernacular and native.

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The types of the houses were Tudor, or Queen Anne, a few

were neo Georgian. Recreation of English Countryside in the
town was done. In 1937 Britain sported a Pavilion at the Paris
International Exhibition which was designed by the architect
Oliver Hill and was partly modern and partly traditional, a
white box with curvaceous lines but with Georgian shaped
windows, inside it contained a traditional vision of England
with tennis, weekend cottages, and shepherds. The Empire
pavilion expressed inside the reality of inter-war England: the countryside, cottages and
fresh air. The mood drifted from the decorative chaos of the arts and crafts towards a
more regular, symmetrical sense of design.

The Georgians had admired the architecture of Roman senators; the Victorians the Medici
and the Gonzaga in whom they saw themselves and the Edwardians admired the
Georgians. Georgian architecture was promoted by the magazine Country Life under its
editor, from 1933, Christopher Hussey. The conservation society the Georgian group was
founded in 1937 to stop the demolition of so many Georgian terraces as Georgian
building came back to fashion. Country people also took up the role of preservation of
the countryside. All this led to a Georgian revival which was became the dominant style
in inter war England. Modernism was a rejection of historical styles and the Georgian
revival was emphatically a backward looking phenomenon. While the First World War did
not mark a deceive break in English architecture, the second was cataclysmic.

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