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‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Abstract 4

Christine Hui Lan Manley, ‘Modern City versus Garden City: Housing at Harlow New Town’.

During post-war reconstruction debates, Garden City supporters promoted low-density housing, while modernist architects advocated high-density high-rise regional planning. As members of the MARS Group, E. Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew fell into the latter camp, with Fry playing a key role in the development of the MARS Plan for London. The post-war New Towns program provided the ideal opportunity to test these new planning concepts, especially since a number of MARS Group members were commissioned to design the towns. Gibberd was selected to plan Harlow and was determined to create a modernist town with an urban character. Naturally, he turned to fellow MARS Group member Fry to design housing in the first neighbourhood, Mark Hall North.

In partnership with Jane Drew, Maxwell Fry designed housing groups ‘Tanys Dell’ and ‘The Chantry’ at Harlow. However, hampered by the low density recommendations, the housing in Mark Hall North was considered a ‘failure’ in 1953 by The Architectural Review. This paper seeks to examine the process involved with the design of the neighbourhood to show that a modernist agenda was, in this instance, compromised by the overpowering influence of the Garden City model.

By analysing the distribution and layout of housing in Mark Hall North, this paper will reveal how Gibberd, Fry and Drew sought to create higher density housing groups in an attempt to orientate the New Town toward the modernist high-density vertical city paradigm and away from the low-density Garden City planning model. However, government design publications and Ministry officials had envisaged Garden City type planning for the New Towns. This paper will argue that despite the various strategies employed by Gibberd, Fry and Drew at Mark Hall North, ultimately, the prevailing inclination toward Garden City planning restricted the creation of a modern urban character at this first neighbourhood in Harlow.
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Christine Hui Lan Manley is currently completing her PhD at the Mackintosh School of Architecture. Her research centres on the concept of ‘urbanity’ – a notion which developed in Britain through architectural discourse during the 1940s and ’50s. Christine’s PhD research investigates how urbanity was defined and understood by the architectural avant-garde, and how the idea was applied to the design of housing in the Post-War New Towns.

Christine became interested in housing design whilst working for a London-based architectural practice, where she designed plans for high density sites and worked on innovative social housing schemes. Her interest in the development of housing in a historical context arose during research carried out during Diploma and Masters studies at the Mackintosh School. Christine is a member of the C20th Society and currently edits their ‘Building of the Month’ feature. Her PhD research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

June 25, 2013

Fry & Drew

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‘The Influence of Fry and Drew’ Conference, Abstract 1

Christina Papadimitriou, ‘Houses of Chandigarh’.

“Birth is an impingement by an environment which insists on being important… To be born or to relive birth is to experience the feeling of being in the grips of something external.” Donald Winnicott

This paper will narrate the story of the housing schemes of Chandigarh built in a period of anxiety shortly after India’s independence in 1947. Following Nihal Perera’s argument that Chandigarh is a hybrid of imaginations negotiated between multiple agencies rather than a single author’s creation, the narrative will try to give an account of the different voices expressed and the different visions of modernity moving between individuals – as diverse as Otto Koenigsberger, Albert Mayer, Matthew Nowicki, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret – and national and institutional platforms.

The main argument will be made in terms of international relationships, with major and minor players, as they manifest themselves in the building of the houses of Chandigarh and not in post-colonial terms since the latter frame of thought has the tendency to reduce the ex-colony to the role of a post-colony. Thus, by focusing on Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, this paper will compare their housing projects in Chandigarh not only to their work in West Africa or in the Middle East, as is usually the case, but also with their projects in Britain such as the two schemes designed for Harlow, the Tany’s Dell and Chantry housing groups. Since Fry and Drew were also responsible for the bye-laws provisioned for Chandigarh, similarities and differences between them and those of the London County Council will also be drawn. The paper’s aim is to demonstrate a process of modernization that affects everyone but where “effects” on a specific subject depend on the latter’s position in the instance of modernization.

Christina Papadimitriou is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University where she received her M.A. in 2011. She also holds an M.A. (Dist.) in Histories and Theories from the Architectural Association in London, a Diploma (Dist.) in Architecture from the University of Patras and a Diploma in Art and Archaeology (Dist.) from the University of Athens. Her dissertation studies the MARS Group in Britain from 1933 until 1957. Starting as a marginal architectural group, MARS acquired a preeminent position both in England and abroad after the Second World War and played an important role in the way the modern movement was perceived and disseminated globally. The dissertation takes on specific themes of shared interest as indicated by the group’s organized committees and narrates the MARS story through exemplary but formally diverse solutions to the obstacles the group had identified in Britain’s way to modernism.

Contact: cpapadim@princeton.edu

Fry and Drew: From the Archives

By Jessica Holland

June 11, 2013

Fry & Drew

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The Bauhaus Effect

In late 1934 Walter Gropius left Nazi Germany with his wife, Ise. Taking up Jack and Molly Pritchard’s offer to stay in one of their Isokon flats, at Lawn Road in Hampstead, Gropius joined Maxwell Fry in a partnership that would last until his appointment at Harvard University in 1937.

Fry and Gropius worked with Jack Pritchard on a series of projects for Isokon buildings – at sites in Manchester, Windsor, and Birmingham – although all went unrealised. The ‘Isokon 3’ scheme at St. Leonard’s Hill on the outskirts of Windsor was the most developed of these and featured in a 1935 article entitled ‘Cry Stop to Havoc – or preservation by development’ by the Architectural Review. The article’s alarmist title reflects contemporary debate regarding the spoilation of the English countryside by suburban sprawl, which new organisations such as the Council for Preservation of Rural England sought to address. Fry and Pritchard were familiar with such ideas through their involvement with the Design and Industries Association, and used this debate to push forward their plans for a modernist development; as Pritchard wrote, Isokon aimed ‘to make a profit from building in the country without spoiling the countryside’.

Page showing ground floor plan of Isokon 3, from ‘Cry Stop to Havoc’, Architectural Review, 1935.

Situated amidst 33 acres of parkland of a ruined Elizabethan country house, the article demonstrates how the Isokon 3 development might preserve 32 acres of the park as open space. With the historic setting and views out towards Windsor Forest, the combination of English heritage and modern European architecture was promoted as unique. The AR article is full of photographs of existing camellia bushes and references to Eton and Windsor Castle, alongside seductive sketches of light, airy rooms with unobstructed views. Pritchard wrote: ‘The combination of Gropius and Fry should be important … Fry’s own very English point of view combined with Gropius’ experience should produce a fine scheme.’ This anglicization of Gropius’s Bauhaus ideas was a canny move and the scheme was given approval – unlike many modernist projects of the period. However the company was unable to raise the necessary funds, despite Pritchard’s best efforts, and Isokon 3 remained unbuilt.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

June 5, 2013

Fry & Drew

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CFP Deadline Extended

**ABSTRACT DEADLINE EXTENDED TO SUNDAY 9TH JUNE 2013**

Thanks for your great response to the call for papers.

We have received a few late entries this week, so if you’ve missed the 2nd June deadline but would like to submit a proposal, please send in your abstract by the 9th of June and we’ll add it to the pile… Thanks!

Notifications will be still sent out by mid-June, with details of speakers and a conference programme to follow.

Lacaton and Vassal: Interview

By Jessica Holland

May 14, 2013

Lacaton & Vassal

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‘changing my situation’

Here’s another excerpt from an interview with Jean-Philippe Vassal, carried out in 2006 as part of a research project funded by the Franco-British Union of Architects. Vassal talks more about the references to ‘far-away’ places within their architecture and the influence of Africa…

Management Sciences University Building, Bordeaux. Lacaton & Vassal, completed 2006. Roses climb up and across a grid of wires to create a facade of flowers.

JH Because the Union encourages relations between the French and British in terms of architecture it is perhaps pertinent to ask whether you consider your work to be typically French in any way?

JPV Perhaps there is a part, yes, but I don’t know… What I do know is that I have travelled quite a lot, I have lived in Africa and I am very curious of different things. I like changing my situation, to see new things and sometimes I am frightened by the fact that architecture could fix you somewhere. Each time I have the possibility of creating a new project somewhere else or the possibility in my work to take something from a different place – like flowers, like Turkish tiles [at the Architekturzentrum cafe in Vienna] – to make this connection with another country, to escape. Very often, with flowers.

JH Like your University building in Grenoble, for example?

JPV Yes, where we use tropical flowers. We have also just finished a big building in Bordeaux with roses as a background. We have 700 climbing rose trees with beautiful flowers and yes, to find something that creates distance from the architecture, from materiality.

JH Do you think this comes from [your] living in Morocco? I’ve read that Casablanca is a city where French [culture] and the West meets with Islamic culture…

JPV Yes, this confrontation occurs. In Casablanca you have a lot of incredible, modern architecture of the 1950s, the ’70s – really beautiful buildings and at the same time you have the medina, you have this mix. It is very interesting and there is a sort of… old and new things touch, there are different styles very close to each other.

In the 2G book [Lacaton and Vassal by Ilka and Andreas Ruby] there is an image of a nomadic school in the Sahara. There is nothing around the school, it is just a hut and we don’t know where the parents of the children are, but we imagine the children travelling long distances to arrive at the school. It is, I don’t know, a structure of 80 metres square, about 1.5 or 1.6 metres high – not very tall – and made of branches in the sand. So when it is really hot and bright outside, inside the hut it is dark and cool. The plants allow strips of light in and you enter this place to go to school. There are twenty school children, 6 or 7 years old, sitting in the sand all looking in one direction at a TV screen with a programme on – no teacher, you don’t need a teacher, just a TV. There are batteries and the TV which are linked to a solar panel on the roof and it is in the middle of the desert! And for me, it’s really the embodiment of modernity: architecture and modernity are precisely this. This mix of situation, place and these elements create – very efficiently, but also with a lot of poetry – this story.

JH Does this place exist now?

JPV Yes, it exists. Maybe for three years and then the wind blows it down and they just build another… And the children, you can go in and they don’t care, they just focus on the TV screen and the programme they are watching.

JH And so they learn maths and science through TV.

JPV Yes. For me, this is precisely architecture because here in Europe you could not imagine this happening. I like to imagine this cross fertilisation of things. Here you say no, I cannot employ straw as a roofing material, I cannot have a TV if there is no window… You can adapt very traditional things with more modern things; it is very easy.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

May 10, 2013

Fry & Drew

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Call for Papers Reminder

** DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: SUNDAY 2ND JUNE 2013 **

‘THE INFLUENCE OF FRY AND DREW’

THURSDAY 10TH – FRIDAY 11TH OCTOBER 2013

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY, U.K.

For over fifty years, E. Maxwell Fry (1899–1987) and Jane B. Drew (1911–96) were integral members of the English architectural avant-garde. The Fry and Drew partnership – in its various incarnations – was a magnet for architects and architectural students from all over the world, giving the practice a distinctly international outlook. Their built works, from the 1920s to the 1980s, cross the globe from Europe to South-east Asia.

This conference seeks to investigate the themes and movements of twentieth century architecture and town planning that have been influenced by the work of Fry and Drew, and vice versa. What is the context of Fry and Drew’s architecture? Is it possible to identify a FryDrew strand of Modernism or a house style? What is their architectural legacy?

We welcome papers from scholars and practitioners, and encourage proposals from early career researchers and graduate students. Papers might address, but are not limited to:

Inter-war Modernism – early influences, the rise of Modernism in England, collaborators and creative networks (such as contractors, engineers, artist, patrons).

Post-war Modernism – the Festival of Britain style, the Brutalist movement and younger British modernists, questioning the modernist agenda, the work of Fry and Drew’s former employees.

Colonialism – comparisons of colonizers in architectural and theoretical terms, war-time postings, colonial frameworks (for example, the role of the Public Works Departments).

Post-colonialism – tradition and modernity, design and identity, cultural colonialism. For example, Fry and Drew’s work at Chandigarh, in West Africa, throughout the Middle East.

Tropical Architecture – the use of new technologies and design ideas, its network and legacy, reassessment of the tropical, tropical architecture pedagogies at the Architectural Association and beyond.

Town Planning – the Garden City model, the neighbourhood unit, modernist planning schemes, the New Towns and post-war rebuilding, the spread and implementation of CIAM guidelines.

Fry & Drew’s wider influence – their patronage of art, Drew’s significance for women (in architecture), influential personal or professional relationships, their published texts, their involvement in architectural design education.

We invite abstracts of up to 300 words for 20-minute papers. Please email Jessica Holland and Iain Jackson at fryanddrew@gmail.com by Sunday 2nd June 2013.

See the conference page for further details.

Fry and Drew: Current Research

By Jessica Holland

April 25, 2013

Fry & Drew

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Tropical Architecture in … Massachusetts

From February to June 1961, Jane Drew took up a visiting professorship at MIT in Boston. Ostensibly this was to allow an uninterrupted period of work on the manuscript for Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones (1964), yet it also allowed Drew to undertake lucrative television and radio interviews, and she toured Canada giving lectures in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Perhaps most significantly, the post enabled Drew to participate in the lively modernist architectural community in New England. She wrote to Maxwell Fry back in London:

‘I have seen everyone lunched with Gropius dined with Serge [Chermayeff], drinks with Sert breakfast with Gidion [sic]. Have started my class taken part in a jury with Kahn its all very stimulating and interesting and I am learning at quite a rate.’

She also worked with Eduardo Catalano (1917-2010), the Argentinian-born architect and a professor at MIT. Drew was perhaps already acquainted with him through his six-year post at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, which began in 1945. Their collaboration was an important one: Drew and Catalano established a MIT Tropical Architecture course using the AA’s Tropical Architecture programme as a model. Established by Fry and Drew in 1955, the AA course was the first of its kind and the couple evidently saw it as a blueprint for other institutions to use and develop. At MIT Drew and Catalano did just that as Drew later wrote to Fry:

‘Catelanno [sic] and I have worked hard and produced a course on tropical architecture for M.I.T. very different from that at the A.A. and I think better but life has to evolve slowly.’

Indian Connections: Current Research

By jacksoniain

April 19, 2013

India

Indian Connections with the Liverpool School of Architecture

I’m hoping to uncover more connections, exchanges and networks between India and the Liverpool School of Architecture. Please feel free to get in touch if you know of any other Indian Architects and Planners who studied in Liverpool during the early-mid twentieth century, or were directly influenced by Reilly, Budden, Gardner-Medwin, Abercrombie, Holford.This post focuses on three architects who came from India to study at Liverpool; Srinivasarao Harti Lakshminarasappa (BArch in 1921), T. J. Manickham (BArch in 1940) and D. V. R. Rao (BArch in 1950). In all three cases their careers have adopted a tripartite approach of practice, teaching and writing. In the cases of Manickam and Rao they also worked in the West Indies and Middle East, respectively, with the UN. Gardner-Medwin had taken a similar role in India during the early 1950s. The role of the UN in terms of development/welfare/self-build is an interesting and under-researched component of ‘Tropical Architecture’ in the post WW2 era. Furthermore as demonstrated in these two cases, non-European professionals were advising on planning and architecture matters in other parts of the world, illustrating a shift in power-knowledge relations and a more complex network of exchange than the polar colonizer-colonized model would suggest.

Srinivasarao Harti Lakshminarasappa. Born circa 1885.

Lalit Mahal Palace, Mysore, circa 1930s

He was the chief architect to the Maharaja of Mysore and worked on the ostentatious Lalit Mahal Palace, completed around 1930, along with E. W. Fritchley.He also worked on a number of other prestigious projects, including Mysore Town Hall and the Municipal offices, known as the BBMP building (built 1933-36) and was also involved in education as the Principle of the College of Engineering, Bangalore.

T. J. Manickam (1913-1974) Manickam studied at University of Mysore before studying at Liverpool where he completed the BArch degree in 1940 and the Post Graduate Diploma in Civic Design in 1946. He then returned to India, and took up office in the substantial Public Works Department (PWD) before establishing the School of Town & Country Planning in Delhi in 1955.

T. J. Manickam, circa 1970s.

In conjunction with the ITPI he established the Planning Campus in 1958 and merged with the Architecture department of Delhi polytechnic in 1959 to form the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA). This is a prestigious school and is ranked amongst India’s top architecture schools. Manickam designed a new campus in 1965.
Aware of the importance of disseminating his findings and the reputation of the school, Manickham also founded the journal, Urban and Rural Planning Thought in 1958 (based on the Town Planning Review). He also wrote several articles for Urban & Region al Planning, “Housing Crisis in the east” (1971) for example, and the books New Towns in India, (SPA, 1960), and Housing Crisis in the East, (SPA, 1970)

Furthermore he served as a UN co-ordinator in the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago) and was a UN Advisor to the Government of Jamaica between 1963-66.

D. V. R. Rao: Prof. Rao has been kind enough to write some of his memories of Liverpool and career highlights and these are included below (email correspondence with Jackson, 2012)

D.V.R. Rao graduation photograph, Liverpool, 1950

“I am pleased to have had the opportunity to reminisce on my Liverpool days and answer some of the questions posed by Dr Iain Jackson

Why I chose Liverpool– After graduating in civil Engineering from Bangalore University I decided to go to the UK for further studies under the Tata scholarship. Prof Manickam and Mr Lakshminarasappa were both graduates from Liverpool practising in Bangalore at that time. Both spoke highly of the quality of education at the Liverpool School of Architecture which is why I decided on Liverpool and travelled there after the war

Prof Budden –I studied under Prof Budden whom I remember as an excellent teacher and particularly proficient in classic architecture. I graduated from Liverpool university in 1950.There were no other Indian students at the time. Liverpool University was not particularly well known in India except to a small section of post graduate students teachers and academics

Subsequent career– I returned to India in 1950 did a few small assignments and was subsequently appointed to IIT Kharagpur as architect to the campus and assistant professor of the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning. I was fortunate enough to meet Prof Vishwanath Prasad who had earlier worked with Prof Abercrombie, planner of Greater London and Prof Matthews of Clyde valley Regional development. I was promoted to Professor and Head of department of Architecture

In 1963 I took over as officiating director of the SPA, Delhi during the absence of Prof Manickam who was away on a 3 year foreign assignment [Ed – on the UN mission to West Indies]. On Prof Manickam’s return I continued in the SPA as Professor and Head of Department of housing studies as I had developed a keen interest in social housing which had become a serious issue. I initiated research into the sociological and economic aspects of massive social housing programmes for disadvantaged people. This drew the attention of UN organizations who were conducting similar studies in other developing countries

Following the sad and untimely passing away of Professor Manickam I took over as director of the school.I developed a strong research centre on rural housing and construction of demonstration houses to help improve the quality of houses in rural areas. Meanwhile I had also worked towards getting the School elevated to the status of a deemed university

In 1977 I was invited by the United Nations to serve as technical advisor in Town and Regional planning in Saudi Arabia . I worked mainly in Riyadh and other Emirates for 9 years from 1977 to 1986 .During this time our team (comprised of a number of international architects and planning consultants) undertook planning and development of major cities alongside a national spatial strategy for equitable distribution of the population. This became the basis for all further and future development in Saudi Arabia.

I retired in 1986 and returned to India. Since then I have been associated with a few consultancy groups.In recent years I have withdrawn from any active participation on grounds of advancing age and deteriorating health”.

I would like to express my thanks to Prof. Rao and his family for helping with this research and for providing the photograph above.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

April 16, 2013

Fry & Drew

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Keynote Speakers Announcement

We are delighted to confirm the following invited speakers for the forthcoming conference on ‘The influence of Fry and Drew’, to be held at Liverpool School of Architecture, 10th – 11th October 2013:

Hilde Heynen, Head of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning at KU Leuven, Belgium

Elizabeth Darling, Senior Lecturer in Art History at Oxford Brookes University, UK

Jiat-Hwee Chang, Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Singapore

See the conference page for the call for papers.

Fry and Drew: Conference

By Jessica Holland

April 9, 2013

Fry & Drew

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The Influence of Fry and Drew

CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS

THURSDAY 10TH – FRIDAY 11TH OCTOBER 2013

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY, U.K.

We welcome papers from scholars and practitioners, and encourage proposals from early career researchers and graduate students. Papers might address, but are not limited to:

Inter-war Modernism – early influences, the rise of Modernism in England, collaborators and creative networks (such as contractors, engineers, artist, patrons).

Post-war Modernism – the Festival of Britain style, the Brutalist movement and younger British modernists, questioning the modernist agenda, the work of Fry and Drew’s former employees.

Colonialism – comparisons of colonizers in architectural and theoretical terms, war-time postings, colonial frameworks (for example, the role of the Public Works Departments).

Post-colonialism – tradition and modernity, design and identity, cultural colonialism. For example, Fry and Drew’s work at Chandigarh, in West Africa, throughout the Middle East.

Tropical Architecture – the use of new technologies and design ideas, its network and legacy, reassessment of the tropical, tropical architecture pedagogies at the Architectural Association and beyond.

Town Planning – the Garden City model, the neighbourhood unit, modernist planning schemes, the New Towns and post-war rebuilding, the spread and implementation of CIAM guidelines.

Fry & Drew’s wider influence – their patronage of art, Drew’s significance for women (in architecture), influential personal or professional relationships, their published texts, their involvement in architectural design education.

We invite abstracts of up to 300 words for 20-minute papers. Please email Jessica Holland and Iain Jackson at fryanddrew@gmail.com by Sunday 2nd June 2013.

Please check the conference page for regular updates.