In their very different ways, these areextremely valuable additions to the quiteslim Biba literature to date (notably thealmost unfindable catalogue of the 1993Newcastle exhibition ‘Biba: The Label, theLifestyle, the Look’). The Biba newspapergiven out at the Derry and Toms launchannounced ‘Nothing here will ever makethe Design Centre, but shrewd investorscould buy now, with an eye to Sotheby’s in1993’. It seems entirely appropriate thatIn Biba is already changing hands as acollectable item.
phil baker
Writer, London
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSE
IN BRITAIN: FROM THE ARCHIVES
OF COUNTRY LIFE
alan powers
Aurum Press 2004 d40.00 $55.00192 pp. 200 col & mono illusisbn 1-84513-012-X
ENGLISH GARDENS IN THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
tim richardson
Aurum Press 2005 d 40.00 $55.00208 pp. 240 col & mono illusisbn 1-84513-071-5
Alan Powers and Tim Richardsonhave trawled Country Life magazine’sextensive photo archives to pro-
vide a fascinating record of the Britishcountry house and garden through thetwentieth century. Either book – or better,both books – would be a treat for anyarchitect, landscaper, decorator, indeedanyone with an interest in twentieth-century design.
Country Life began publishing in 1892when Edward Hudson took over thefailing Racing Illustrated, changed its nameto Country Life Illustrated and shifted itsfocus from horse-racing to rural living.Then, as now, the magazine was financedby property ads, and within a few decadesit had became the barometer of middle-class taste.
In both books the authors place theirsubject in the context of shifting culturalvalues and economic conditions. Chartingthe evolution of the country house, Powersdraws on the literature and art of the timeto present an amusing picture of owners,houseguests and country-house amuse-ments as well as interior design andexterior landscaping.
Ranging from large country houses,through suburban villas to tiny urbanin-fills, Powers demonstrates how socialchange is expressed in domestic architec-ture. While the scarcity of building materi-als in the early 1920s led to smallerhouses, the breakdown of class distinc-tions, obviating the need for separatetradesmen’s entrances, had an even moreprofound effect on house design. Simi-larly, while the advent of central heatingmeant rooms could be large and open, itwas the absence of domestic staff that wasmost significant in shaping interior lay-out; without the need for privacy fromprying servants open plan became thenorm, allowing the woman of the house tofulfil her multiple roles as cleaner, cook,hostess and childminder from the vantagepoint of the kitchen, which often openedonto both living-room and garden.
Powers provides a fascinating look atarchitectural styles and the often arbitrarydistinctions between them. Though 1920smodernism seemed to break with the past,the late-Victorian Arts and Crafts move-ment, with its covered porches and othertransitional spaces, had anticipated themodernist desire to integrate interior andexterior. Meanwhile, the modernist styleoften masked traditional techniques andmaterials beneath its streamlined veneersand proclamations of scientific efficiency.After the Second World War it seemedinsensitive to build vast private dwellingswhen the masses were still homeless, butmodest designs and ingenious use ofsalvaged material produced a new col-lage-like aesthetic.
As well as the houses themselves,Powers looks at architects and clients,acknowledging that the projects featuredin the magazine reflect not only shiftsin taste, but changes in patrons.The dearthof articles about large classical houses inthe 1960s was due, in part, to the discretionof wealthy clients and their fears aboutsecurity rather than any movement awayfrom the grand style. The preponderanceof small, avant-garde projects in the sameperiod demonstrates that canny architectsrealised they could promote their reputa-tions through the magazine by providingphotographs of their own houses.
Powers also explores the key journal-ists and photographers whose workshaped the nation’s taste. When Christo-pher Hussey joined Country Life’s staff in1920 he determined to end Britain’sobsession with the past. In the 1930s John
Summerson promoted modernism asromantic and exciting (though EvelynWaugh descried it as ‘a post-war Corbu-sier plague’). Powers names the mid-1950s as one of the most interestingperiods in domestic architecture, withsuch writers as Mark Girouard champion-ing the modernism that Hussey onlytentatively embraced.
This golden age was halted by thegrowing ecology movement, the oil crisisand the rapid inflation of the 1970s. Withdesigners retreating to the sureties ofthe past, conservation and restorationreplaced earlier innovation as city centreswere suddenly demolished and countryhouses preserved. During the 1980s,Thatcherite individuality ensured a bold,whimsical, but essentially conservativeapproach as postmodernism borrowedfrom previous styles, playing with classicalmotifs and exaggerated scales. In 1991‘modern’ became ‘heritage’ when theNational Trust took on Erno Goldfinger’s1940s terraced house in Willow Walk. Fiveyears later the Tory government encour-aged innovation when it altered planningpolicy to favour new country houses ofoutstanding merit.
Though English garden design wasshaped by the same social, economic andpolitical forces, it developed quite sepa-rately from English architecture. In anequally lucid and wide-ranging work, TimRichardson extends beyond his book’stitle to trace the international influencesbehind twentieth-century English horti-culture. While concentrating on Englishgardens and their designers, he exploreskey sculptors, architects, writers andphotographers, and encompasses seminalprojects in both Scotland and Wales.
Gardening is a notoriously impreciseand ephemeral art form, and while Englishhorticulture moved from the monumentalsplendour of the Victorian estate to thesuburban quirkiness of 1990s postmoder-nists, certain trends recurred throughoutthe century. Chief among these was thecottage garden, a style which came toprominence when industrialisation andrural depopulation provoked middle-classnostalgia for an idealised past. Richardsonwryly notes that the style was immorta-lised early on by an army of amateur watercolourists, many of whom went on tobecome children’s book illustrators.
An alternative response to the turmoilof the Industrial Revolution was the retreatinto historicism – which also proved
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Reviews: Architecture
enduringly popular. The rediscovery ofsuch features as topiary, sundials, pavi-lions, courtyards and bowling greensevoked the feudal certainties of theseventeenth-century manor, while her-baceous borders, exotic plants, specimentrees and large lawns gave a modern twistto these revivalist gardens.
Richardson delights in challenginghorticultural orthodoxy. Resurrecting Ger-trude Jekyll from the role of sensible,amateur plantswoman, he repositions heras a visionary artist. He questions thesupremacy of Sissinghurst; pitting itagainst Hidcote, with which it sharesiconic status, Richardson suggests thatthe enigmatic American Lawrence John-ston’s manicured precision, episodic lay-out and subtle subversions of expectationgive his garden the edge over Sackville-West’s shabby-chic, Bloomsbury bohe-mianism. He also points out that boththese flagships of English horticulturehave benefited from the marketing exper-tise of the National Trust.
Indeed, Richardson’s book is full offascinating facts and astute observations.He suggests that England’s ubiquitousherbaceous border owes its popularity tothe way that it displays a gardener’s skill.He argues that while the architecturalideas of Le Corbusier, Mies and Gropiusnever really found a horticultural equiva-lent, the modernist aesthetic weavesthrough English gardens in their function-ality, simplicity, asymmetry, use of newmaterials and integration of contemporaryart. He has unearthed a vibrant trade inflower-smuggling through Covent Gardenduring the wartime prohibition on the railtransportation of flora. He notes, intrigu-ingly, that Country Life began using Latinnames in its picture captions in 1961 justwhen gardening was undergoing a processof democratisation. He also points outthat the importance of social connectionshas made it taboo to criticise gardensin print and suggests that this genteelpoliteness in the place of informed criti-cism has perpetuated the low status ofgardening among the arts.
Richardson brings his study up to thepresent with an examination of the Con-ceptual garden – a subject he is well placedto present, having written the first book onthe Ur-Conceptual landscape designer,Martha Schwartz. This style, which evolvedfrom Pop art and postmodern architecture,derives its design from a dominant idea – a‘concept’– inspired by the site’s history,
ecology or function, rather than layout orplants. Richardson illustrates several of themost contemporary gardens with photosfrom the short-lived New Eden magazine,of which he was founding editor. As heexplains, the magazine, part of the CountryLife stable, was a critical success ‘andproved to be commercially buoyant, butthose are not the only important factors inthe corporate world. . .’.
Though the English love of flowers,narrative and charm militates against anylarge-scale embracing of the horticulturalavant-garde, Richardson predicts that, inthe twenty-first century, an ecologicallyresponsible approach to layout andmaterial, coupled with traditional plants-manship, will ensure that horticulturecontinues to be the main English mediumfor exploring that most profound ofrelationships, the interaction betweenman and nature.
katie campbell
Writer and garden historian; author of Icons ofTwentieth Century Landscape Design
(Frances Lincoln 2006)
THE NEW PALACES OF
MEDIEVAL VENICE
juergen schulz
The Penn State University Press 2004 d61.50 $85.00368 pp. 218 mono illusisbn 0-271-02351-1
The palaces lining Venice’s GrandCanal make it one of the mostrecognisable waterways in the
world. Schulz’s study is concerned withthe humble predecessors of today’s mag-nificent palaces, with a particular empha-sis on the evolution of a distinctivelyVenetian palace type and the ways inwhich the medieval palaces were used bytheir occupants. The author establishesthat ‘the Venetian pre-Gothic palace isto be accounted a Continental, westernEuropean building type’ that, duringthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries, wasadapted to Venice’s special topographicand demographic circumstances. He ar-gues that the building type and itsfunctions reflects the needs of Venice’surban elite, made up of increasinglyprosperous merchants who were turningthis environment into a centre of trade.
The first part of the book deals withSchulz’s discussion of his findings. Firstcomes a consideration of the buildingtype. In the absence of any surviving
lower-class lay houses of the twelfth andthirteenth centuries in Venice, all observa-tions are based on elite dwellings. Schulznotes that pre-Gothic palaces tended to beconstructed end-on to the water in order tomaximise the availability of land, as wellas to minimise the danger of erosion. Thenotion that Venetian building types areByzantine is dismissed by Schulz; heargues instead that the palace type iscontinental and expressive of the ‘exqui-sitely adaptive character of the specificallyVenetian palace in siting, structure, layoutand articulation’ (that is, a common palacetype has been adapted to particular localcircumstances). The Byzantine characterof the palaces is superficial, and derivedfrom the details of the decoration. Thesecond chapter examines the distributionof functions within the medieval Venetianpalace. Schulz comments on the fact thatone notable feature of Venetian palacearchitecture was its conservatism; that is,while the look of palaces may havechanged, before the seventeenth-centurythe use of space within the palace wasslow to evolve. Palaces served both asdwellings and as warehouses, with spaceneeded for storage, for stables and forspare boats. The most important space inthe palace was the first floor hall, whichserved as a dining room and day room,and whose decoration was a clear indica-tor of social status. Schulz describes thepalaces as characterised by their utilitariansimplicity, again emphasising his conten-tion that the medieval Venetian palace wassuperbly adapted to its peculiar environ-ment. The third chapter considers theVenetian palace from the point of viewof the social background of its inhabi-tants. Here the author comments on atendency amongst the Venetian elite tomove their residences closer and closerto the edge of the water, a trend thatwould eventually make the Grand Canalinto Venice’s most characteristic andsplendid (tourist and) processional route.Palaces were increasingly orientated to-wards the waterside, built of expensivematerials and with richly decorated fa-cades. Palaces became the outward em-bodiment of a family’s identity, andpossession of a waterside palace wascoveted and much contested. Each changeof ownership fuelled competition betweenthe urban elite, with palaces reflectingchanges in fashion in palace design and agreater need for comfort and privacy. Thefinal chapter considers the role of archi-
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Reviews: Architecture
