Debating architecture in the pages of the Architectural Press
Kelly, Jessica (2017) Debating architecture in the pages of the Architectural Press. In: Architecture, Citizenship, Space: British Architecture from the 1920s to the 1970s Conference, 15-16 June 2017, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK. (Unpublished)
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The Architectural Review (AR) was founded at the end of the nineteenth century on the principle that architecture was part of a broad landscape of cultural activity. This meant that the discussion of architecture should seek to reach beyond architects and the allied professions to engage with artistic practitioners and writers, as well as government and planning officials, patrons and other interested and appreciative laymen. The editors and many of the contributors to the AR understood their role (and the role of the magazine) to be that of a cultural guide. From 1927 the AR was reinvented as a ‘Modern’ publication, experimenting with new forms of visual communication, content and tone, but these prior concerns remained consistent. This paper will explore how the magazine approached and presented its ‘guiding’ role in culture both on and off the printed page.
The appointment of J.M. Richards as editor of the AR in 1935 further aligned with magazine’s founding principles with the current interests of Modern architecture. Throughout the 1930s the magazine consistently addressed a ‘public’ readership. This was not because the magazine had a broad public audience, but because it was increasingly preoccupied with questions of how to present Modern architecture to the public, how to discuss the role new role of modern architects. This imagined audience shaped the tone and content of much of the magazine. This paper will consider how the pages of the magazine and the spaces in which they were produced (the AR’s office and the homes of Richards and his friends and colleagues), were sites for the negotiation and definition of the ideas of Modern architecture in Britain; specifically, how Modern architecture conceived of its relationship to the public.
The paper will explore how the debate between the expertise of the modern architect and the taste of the ‘public’ was both gendered (public ambivalence to Modern architecture was discussed in terms of untamed ‘feminine taste’ or uneducated female consumers) and class specific (the middle class educated public were targeted for persuasion and conversion, while the working class public were abstracted and spoken on behalf of, or ignored). Using articles published in the magazine and key players behind the production of the magazine, this paper will explore the negotiations at the AR between modern architecture and what one contributor labelled ‘the tyranny of public taste’.
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