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(the growth of London, pressures of industrial growth and reaction by architects—

first, in the Gothic Revival—with its emphasis on moral degradation and renewal with
a return to a pre-capitalist, ‘national’ culture of architecture)

(the emergence of the Arts and Crafts, from John Ruskin and William Morris, an
argument that takes up the Gothic Revival, but develops this in a number of
directions: towards socialist co-operative values—particularly in the re-joining of
design and making—towards an aesthetic freedom of expression; and towards a
structural rationalism).

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William Morris really sets up the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement in a number
of ways that I would like to adumbrate for you as follows:

1) The critique of commercial, industrial production

2) The critique of the industrial city

3) The marriage of the designer and producer in craft manufacture

4) The investigation of historical vernacular buildings and objects, not for their
reproduction (like the Gothic Revival), but for an investigation and protection of
the way in which they have been made over time
5) The establishment of ‘societies’ or ‘guilds’ for the purpose of production of
buildings and objects, for the reproduction of its members (through commercial
sales but also through mutual daily care), and for the extension of the
movement (through education)

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One of the more immediate consequences of the First World War for architecture in
London was the appearance of sites of memory and mourning. The Cenotaph, which
symbolises all those who died in the Great War, was designed by Edwin Lutyens (the
architect of St Jude in HGS). Lutyens used his very reduced, massive neo-classical
style for the Cenotaph, and this, with his other international designs for sites of
mourning in Northern Europe, became a model for subsequent approaches to
memorial design. Classicism, in some form, became the mode or style for official
architecture of the state once more.

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This was as true for celebratory, as for mournful, monuments. The aims of the British
Empire Exhibition, which opened in 1924, were fourfold:
to alert the public to the fact that in the exploitation of raw materials of the Empire,
new sources of wealth could be produced;
to foster inter-imperial trade;
to open new world markets for Dominion and British products;
and to foster interaction between the different cultures and people of the Empire by
juxtaposing Britain’s industrial prowess with the diverse products of the Dominions
and colonies

It was an imperialist project—and it resorted to Classicism as a means to convey

British imperial ambitions in juxtaposition with reproductions and mock-ups of the
architecture of the colonies and dominions of empire (often fantasies rather than
serious reproductions).

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A less obvious, but in many ways more significant, result of the 1WW, was the
continuing industrial development of the North and West of London. The map on the
right shows the County of London—constituted with the founding of the LCC in the
1880s. The map on the left shows the greater London region. Munitions factories,
and airstrips, were all located to the North West of London in the First World War (far
from the docklands, easing vulnerability from airstrike).

Factories
Electricity
New female workforce
American capital
Suburban development

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Hoover Factory, Designed by Wallis Gilbert and Partners (1931–8)
Open, glass front
Lit the roadway at night as well as being a landmark by day—building as advert

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Detailing in an ‘Egyptian’ art deco style—stylised that is. Signifying the American
origin of the company and of modernity

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Follows the earlier factory in Mornington Crescent, Camden North London. Designed
by M.E and O.H Collins and A.G Porri, 1926–1928.

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There, the art deco motifs are bolder, and more detailed (you could get closer)

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The transformation of industry produced a virtuous circle in London:

Electric powered factories

Female work force
Pressure on domestic service
Increased purchasing power
Production of demand for domestic appliances
More factory work

Industry marketed to women.

Alexander text refers to working-class, but middle classes too

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Fueled literally by coal-power
Battersea Power Station A, opened 1930s.
The first super-power station to generate electricity in London
Due to public disapproval of initial proposals, London board commissioned Giles
Gilbert Scott to design (or ‘dress’) the exterior
Giles Gilbert Scott had designed the K2 telephone box

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Although he designed some of the interior too—this was really a product of
engineering.

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London Underground (and London Transport generally) transformed into a unified,
branded system, in which ‘shopping’ and ‘leisure’ activities were promoted as a
principle reason to use the service.

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On the demand side, products were released to the public through the developing
Department Stores. Selfridge’s an American project—employed Daniel Burnham
(Chicago) to design a steel frame building, which was dressed with massive columns
in 1909.

Steel Frame opens interior

Developed further by William Crabtree at Sloane Square, Peter Jones Store, with
hanging glass exterior: 1932–1936

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Finsbury Health Centre, 1935–8
Labour controlled council

Berthold Lubetkin, Russian émigré, communist, avant-garde modernist

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Plan of building

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Organisation of processing

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Social condenser

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Peckham Pioneer Health Centre, Owen Williams (opened 1935).
Appears resolutely ’modern’.
This is a reinforced concrete building: the large quantities of glass on the main façade
tell us this (glass is not a supporting material, it is ‘hung’ from a frame).

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The plan of the building tells us why the use of this modern technique of building was
so useful.
Here we see the distribution of pillars on a grid.
In the centre is a ‘void’—this was an area for a swimming pool.
Around that central void, one could construct any size or shape of room, following
the grid or breaking with it.
The whole space of the building is transparent and continuous.

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This produces an environment deemed inherently ‘healthy’ (like the Finsbury Health
Centre): light, airy, full of facilities for activities.
Unlike Finsbury, the Peckham Pioneer Centre was based on preventative principles.

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It was also an advanced social experiment: the local working class community of
people were invited to use the facilities of the Pioneer as they wished. These
activities were closely monitored, including diet, habits, routines, activities, interests.
The medical team at the Pioneer recorded these and registered the different health
outcomes for different participants.
The building facilitated not only the activities, but the practice of close observation.

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I’m going to finish with a different kind of ‘health’ project.
Throughout the inter-war period, London’s metropolitan governance was dominated
by Herbert Morrison—a highly ambitious Labour politician, who captured leadership
of the London County Council, and transformed that role into a highly effective
position.
His vision of how to change London was not to provide health care, social security
(where it could) and other ‘welfare’ facilities (as his colleagues in the Labour Party
did).
Instead, he saw an opportunity to transform the centre of London into a ‘leisure’ and
‘pleasure’ capital for the working class.

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Countering the high unemployment experienced by construction workers in the
1930s, Morrison initiated a programme of municipal level Keynsian stimulus, or a
‘New Deal’: funding the construction of a number of ‘Lidos’ (open-air swimming
pools) across London. These used for construction methods—from brick laying to
concrete—that required large quantities of relatively low level skilled labour.

But even the name of these open-air pools—Lido (a stretch of beach near Venice,
Italy) evoked a culture of pleasure, almost aspirational in nature.

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The Lido’s provided a facility for working class people that allowed them to engage in
those ‘healthy’ activities promoted by the Peckham Pioneer Health Centre.

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But they also provided a location for a new culture of consumerism.
I think this image—of four women, sat on the edge of a Lido pool, enjoying cigarettes
(the taboo over women smoking had only just been broken)—demonstrates very
powerfully how the Lido’s were an architecture not of ‘health’ but of pleasure, far
from the uptight ceremonial ‘national’ project of classicism, or the kind of state
socialist project initiated by Finsbury Council and Lubetkin’s Health Centre, and much
closer to the new kind of compromised welfare state culture that London would see
flourish from the mid-1950s.

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Architectural historians have often glossed the period of the 1920s and 30s in London
(and Britain more broadly) as marking either the closure of historicism (gothic, arts
and crafts, or classical); or as indicating the emergence of modernism (whether
American or continental European). Both these perspectives are self-evidently true
enough: after the Second World War, from 1945, London’s architecture has been
dominated by ‘modernism’—the approach exemplified by Lubetkin and Owen
Williams. Classical and other historicist architectural styles fail to ever command
architectural design in the way it had in the nineteenth century.
Yet, I would like to leave you with a small reminder: that transition, from historical
styles to modernism, was in no sense seen as certain to the protagonists of the
period—the argument was very much alive; and in concentrating on the stylistic
issues, we are in danger of losing sight of one of the more fascinating changes
occurring—the marriage of a technological vision of the future (electrical in nature)
which was linked both to the liberation of a whole strata of society (women) and to a
new kind of society—one in which ‘power’, ‘knowledge’, ‘health’, ‘moralism’ or
whatever, was replaced by an idea of a society at pleasure…

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