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Sweet Geometry: Edward Reynolds at the Architectural Association, 1956–58

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2019

Geraint Franklin
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Abstract

This article considers the position of the Anglo-Portuguese architect Edward Reynolds (1926–59) in the British avant-garde of the 1950s. In Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980), Kenneth Frampton suggested that Reynolds's student projects at the Architectural Association in London ‘exerted a decisive influence on the development of Brutalism’. This article scrutinises that claim through the lens of Reynolds's interactions with his peers, including the so-called French House group, an informal network that included his tutors John Killick, James Gowan and Peter Smithson. Notable characteristics of Reynolds's work — chiefly the use of complex and irregular geometries to articulate patterns of activity and movement — are discussed, as are contemporary projects by other members of the group and trends such as the New Brutalism, biomimicry and the revival of pre-war strands of Modernism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 62 , 2019 , pp. 171 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2019 

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References

NOTES

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12 Letter from Reynolds to his parents, 8 August 1947, Reynolds papers.

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14 Letter from Reynolds to his parents, 7 December 1949, Reynolds papers.

15 Letters from Reynolds to his parents, 18 October and 8 November 1949, Reynolds papers.

16 Ibid.

17 Email from Arthur Baker to Charlotte Edmanson, 17 August 2016, Reynolds papers.

18 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/02/01.

19 Michael Webb, pers. comm., 7 February 2016.

20 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/02/03.

21 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/02/04.

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25 ‘Uma nova filosofia sobre arquitectura se formou e essa filosofia se transformou numa expressão que esta concentrada neste programa que eles escollieram. Os meus colegas não gostaram deste projecto e desde então me chamaram “avant-guardist”, mas felizmente há um groupo de intelectuais com quem me dou, pintores, escultores, escritors e arquitectos que pensam e vêem e intrepertam vida da mesma maneiro que eu’: letter from Reynolds to his parents, 4 July 1952, Reynolds papers.

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30 Baker later collaborated with Wilson on a number of London housing projects, and in the 1960s moved to New York, where he worked with James Stirling on a planning study for Manhattan West (Montreal, Canadian Centre for Architecture, AP140.S2.SS1.D34).

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35 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/03/01, sheets 1–5.

36 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/03/01, sheets 6–7.

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39 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/03/01, sheet 9.

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44 Andrew Saint, ‘HJ Whitfield Lewis obituary’, Guardian, 27 April 2010, theguardian.com/society/2010/apr/27/whitfield-lewis-obituary (accessed on 3 May 2019).

45 Patrick Zamarian, ‘“To Fend for Ourselves in Proud Isolation”: The AA School of Architecture in the Postwar Period (1945–1965)’ (doctoral thesis, University of Liverpool, 2017).

46 Howell and Killick, ‘Obituary’, p. 218.

47 Tony Eardley, pers. comm., 31 August 2018.

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51 Cook, ‘Responses’, p. 137.

52 John Partridge, interview with Jill Lever, 12 September 2002, BLSA, NLSC, C467/75/03. Smithson may or may not have been aware of an earlier use of the phrase by the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca in ‘Theory and Play of the Duende’, a 1933 lecture reprinted in Lorca, Federico García, In Search of Duende (New York, 1998)Google Scholar.

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54 Neave Brown, interview with Geraint Franklin, 8 February 2014, BLSA, NLSC, C467/113/04.

55 Kynaston, David, Modernity Britain. Book One: Opening the Box, 1957–1959 (London, 2013)Google Scholar.

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57 An earlier fourth-year housing project of note was Patrick Hodgkinson's of 1953: Swenarton, Mark, ‘High Density without High Rise: Housing Experiments of the 1950s by Patrick Hodgkinson’, in Architecture and the Welfare State, ed. Swenarton, Mark et al. (Abingdon, 2014), pp. 237–57Google Scholar.

58 Gowan, Projects, p. 33.

59 Kadleigh, Sergei, High Paddington, a Town for 8,000 People (London, 1952)Google Scholar. Howell, Killick and Partridge's response was Low Kensington, a project of 1955–56 (Franklin, HKPA, pp. 115–17).

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64 Rowe, Colin, ‘Annual Exhibition of School Work’, Architectural Association Journal, 75 (September/October 1959), pp. 60–66Google Scholar (p. 63).

65 Howell and Killick, ‘Obituary’, p. 218.

66 Rowe, ‘Annual Exhibition’, p. 61.

67 Cook, Peter, ‘Cook's Grand Tour’, Architectural Review, 1040 (1983), pp. 32–43Google Scholar (p. 43).

68 Rowe, ‘Annual Exhibition’, p. 63; Gowan, ‘Annual Exhibition’, p. 67.

69 In the early 1960s, Drake joined Ahrends Burton and Koralek, where he spent the remainder of his working life, having met AA graduate Peter Ahrends while working for Slater, Moberly and Uren on the design of Sanderson House. Janet Drake, pers. comm, 25 August 2016.

70 Gowan, Projects, p. 40.

71 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/04/01/02, sheet 2.

72 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/21/01/02, sheet 16.

73 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/04/01/02, sheet 3.

74 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/04/01/02, sheet 4, entitled ‘diagram: site, hall axis, intermediate flow’.

75 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/21/01/02, sheet 5.

76 Stevens, Thomas, ‘A Concert Hall’, Polygon, 3 (1958)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

77 G.K., ‘Wettbewerb Philharmonie Berlin’, Bauwelt, 28 January 1957, pp. 76–80; Gowan, Projects, p. 40.

78 Jones, Peter Blundell, Hans Scharoun (London, 1995), p. 186Google Scholar.

79 Ibid., p. 178.

80 Franklin, Geraint, ‘White Wall Guys: The Return of Heroic Modernism’, in The Seventies: Twentieth-Century Architecture 10, ed. Harwood, Elain and Powers, Alan (Journal of the Twentieth Century Society, 2012), pp. 89–102Google Scholar.

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82 Conrads, Ulrich and Sperlich, Hans G., Phantastische Architektur (Teufen, Switzerland, 1960)Google Scholar.

83 Letters from Arthur Drexler to Anne Reynolds, 16 February and 19 July 1960, AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/05/01.

84 Peter Blundell Jones, ‘A Forty-Year Encounter with Hans Scharoun’ (PhD by publication, University of Sheffield, 2013), p. 47.

85 Significantly, expressionist or futurist works did not figure in Alison and Peter Smithson's ‘The Heroic Period of Modern Architecture’, Architectural Design, 35 (December 1965), pp. 590–640, although those movements were at the forefront of Banham's, Reyner Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London, 1960)Google Scholar.

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88 Roy Stout, interview with Geraint Franklin, 23 November 2014, BLSA, NLSC, C1730/04/02.

89 ‘An Interesting Entry’, p. 352. The opening paragraph from which this quotation is taken may have been submitted by the designers for publication.

90 Cook, ‘Responses’, p. 139.

91 Stout, interview with Franklin.

92 Cited in Alison and Smithson, Peter, The Charged Void: Architecture (New York, 2002), p. 188Google Scholar.

93 Cambridge, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, CCAR/401/1/5/2/1.

94 Reynolds's sketchbook, c. 1958, AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/04/01/04.

95 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/04/01/02, sheet 6.

96 Monique Lee, pers. comm., 15 July 2016.

97 Steadman, Philip, The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy in Architecture and the Applied Arts (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

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100 Partridge interview, 19 September 2002, London, BLSA, NLSC, C467/75/05; McKean, Leicester, p. 25; Richard Raines, pers. comm., 18 August 2016.

101 Smithsons, The Charged Void, p. 188.

102 John Outram, pers. comm., 2 August 2016; Michael Webb, pers. comm., 7 February 2016.

103 Polygon, 3 (1958), unpaginated. Outram, however, claims that he coined the term (Colomina, Clip, Stamp, Fold, p. 452).

104 Jones, Peter Blundell, Hugo Häring: The Organic Versus the Geometric (Stuttgart, 1999), p. 160Google Scholar.

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106 Pevsner, Nikolaus, ‘Modern Architecture and the Historian or the Return of Historicism’, RIBA Journal, 68 (April 1961), pp. 230–40Google Scholar (p. 231).

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108 Jencks, Charles, ‘Pop–Non Pop 2’, Architectural Association Quarterly, 1.2 (1969), pp. 56–74Google Scholar (p. 62).

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110 In the late 1950s, the company operated about fifty depots and was engaged in an expansion programme. Its name was chosen by Leverhulme., Lord ‘A Name They Live up to: “Speedy Prompt Delivery”’, Transport World, 123 (1958), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

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112 Richards, J.M., The Functional Tradition in Early Industrial Buildings (London, 1958)Google Scholar. For their measured drawing studies, the AA students Robert Maguire and Peter Matthews surveyed the Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale in 1950, while Stephen Rosenberg and Brian Smith chose the Dungeness High Lighthouse (1953), and Fenella Clemens, Jeremy Dixon and Christopher Woodward chose the Great Laxey Wheel on the Isle of Man (1959): Gowan, Projects, pp. 18, 24, 47.

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114 Kenneth Frampton, pers. comm., 13 July 2016.

115 Ellis Woodman, ‘Things are Much Simpler than Architects Make Them Out to Be’, Building Design, 23 May 2008, pp. 12–13.

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118 Howell and Killick, ‘Obituary’, p. 218; C.L. Edmanson, pers. comm., 13 August 2016.

119 The couple were visiting their friend Estrid Bannister-Good, a Danish journalist and a consultant to Allen Lane of Penguin Books. Lane had a holiday cottage at Rosscarbery Bay, designed by an acquaintance of Reynolds, the AA graduate Edward Samuel. Harling, Robert, ed., House and Garden Book of Cottages (London, 1963), pp. 124–25Google Scholar.

120 Letter from Reynolds to his parents, 11 February 1958, Reynolds papers.

121 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/04/02/01, sketch entitled ‘Mill Cove 58’.

122 AAA, AA/02/02/01/03/77/04/02/01, sheet 2.

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128 Cited in Gowan, Projects, p. 31.

129 Powers, Alan, ‘Flying Angels and Solid Walls’, AA Files, 64 (2012), pp. 48–58Google Scholar (p. 50).

130 Peter Jamieson, interview with Geraint Franklin, 10 September 2015, BLSA, NLSC, C1730/13/01; Roy Stout, interview with Geraint Franklin, 23 November 2014, BLSA, NLSC, C1730/04/02; Frank Linden, pers. comm., 18 August 2016.

131 Rowe, ‘Annual Exhibition’, p. 63. He may have had in mind a group of three AA students whom he dubbed the ‘Christian Weirdies’, whose attitude to the Modern movement has been interpreted in terms of dissent or nonconformity (Powers, ‘Flying Angels’, pp. 56–57).

132 Howell and Killick, ‘Obituary’, p. 218.

133 Stevens, ‘A Concert Hall’, unpaginated.

134 Howell and Killick, ‘Obituary’, p. 218.

135 Ibid.