In a more collective, democratic era, architects have had to grow into artists of the committee meeting, people like Charles Holden who (together with Frank Pick) managed to persuade a British government instinctively opposed to serious architecture to make way for several masterpieces of station design on London’s suburban underground lines. As Le Corbusier shrewdly observed: ‘We must always remember that the fates of cities are decided in the Town Hall.’
7.
There are few harsher indictments against architecture than the sadness we feel at the arrival of bulldozers, for our grief is in almost all cases fuelled more by a distaste for what is to be built than by any hatred of the idea of development itself.
When bands of workmen arrived to sketch out the crescents of Bath or Edinburgh’s New Town, as they cut their way through brambles and hammered measuring ropes into the earth, few tears would have been shed at the impending destruction. Although there were no doubt some old and noble trees standing on what would become residential streets, though there must have been burrows for foxes and nests for robins, these succumbed to the saw and the shovel with only passing sorrow from their previous denizens, for what was planned in their place was expected to provide more than adequate compensation. There was a fitting alternative to a field of daisies in St James’s Square, there was beauty of a type to which even a tree could not aspire in Calton Hill, there was serenity such as no stream could match in the Royal Crescent. As William Morris pointed out, had we lived in Venice in her early days and watched the swamplands of the lagoon – muddy-beige smears of a kind still visible on the city’s outskirts – being turned into streets and canals, ‘as islet after islet was built upon, we should have grudged it but little.’ Nor would we have been overly sad, Morris thought, to watch ‘as Oxford crept northward from its early home of Oseney … and the great Colleges and noble churches hid year by year more and more of the grass and flowers of Oxfordshire’.
The architectural benefits of absolutism:
Engraving of Louis XIV ordering the building of Les Invalides in 1672 by R. Bonnard, reproduced in Le Corbusier’s The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning, 1925:
‘He was able to say, “We wish it.” Or “Such is our pleasure.” ’
We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.
‘As islet after islet was built upon, we should have grudged it but little’:
The lagoons that ring Venice
Giovanni and Bartolomeo Buon, Ca’ d’Oro, Venice, 1430
Acknowledgements
With special thanks to: Simon Prosser, Juliette Mitchell, Francesca Main, Helen Fraser, Tom Weldon, Steve Marking, Mary-Jane Gibson, Thomas Manss, Lisa Sjukur, Joana Niemeyer, Kelvin Murray, Miriam Gross, Dorothy Straight, Dan Frank, Nicole Aragi, Neil Crombie, Caroline Dawnay, Charlotte and Samuel.
Picture Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the institutions and individuals who have kindly provided photographic materials for use in this book. In all cases, every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders, but should there be any errors or omissions the author and publishers would be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent edition of this book.
All Le Corbusier drawings and photographs on the following pages are © FLC/ADAGP, Paris, and DACS, London 2006. this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page
this page © FLC;
this page © Digital Image Mies van der Rohe/Gift of the Arch./MOMA/Scala © DACS, London 2006; this page Balthazar Korab; this page Bayerisches Haupstaatsarchiv; this page Nigel Young/Foster and Partners; this page BPK, Berlin: this page courtesy of Bernhard Leitner from ‘The Wittgenstein House’ by Bernhard Leitner, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000; this page Philippa Lewis/Edifice; this page A.F. Kersting; this page Gillian Darley/Edifice; this page A.F. Kersting; this page © Crown Copyright/NMR; this page, this page A.F. Kersting; this page © www.visitrichmond.co.uk; this page A.F. Kersting; this page–this page Stapleton Collection; this page © Crown Copyright/NMR; this page Irish Architectural Archive; this page © NTPL/Matthew Antrobus; this page Institute of Civil Engineers; this page Cameraphoto Arte, Venice; this page Foto Marburg; this page A.F. Kersting; this page © FLC; this page, this page © FLC; Alain de Botton; this page DaimlerChrysler Classic, Corporate Archives; this page © FLC; this page Bauhaus Archive; this page Bridgeman Art Library; this page Christie’s Images; this page Palladium Photodesign, Barbara Burg/Oliver Shuh; Margherita Spiluttini; this page Jean Nouvel; Porcelain Museum, Porsgrunn, Telemark; this page Bridgeman Art Library/Hermitage Museum; this page Michael Shanly Homes; this page © Nacasa & Partners; this page Bernhard Leitner; this page Henry Moore Foundation; this page Tate Gallery © ADAGP, Paris, and DACS, London 2006; this page Jasper Morrison Ltd; this page Barford Sculptures © photo John Riddy; this page Alain de Botton © DACS, London 2006; this page Waddington Galleries/photo Prudence Cuming Associates © Donald Judd Foundation/Vaga, NY/DACS, London 2006; this page Roland Halbe/Artur; this page Sotheby’s New York © Bowness, Hepworth Estate; this page Christie’s Images; this page Gillian Darley/Edifice; this page Hijjas Kasturi; this page Kate Gibson; this page AKG Images; this page Philip de Bay; this page Marc Newson/Ideal Standard; this page bristan.com; this page tapshop.co.uk; this page Christie’s Images; Alinari; this page Foto Marburg; this page RIBA; this page Heinrich Heidersberger/Artur; this page © Gordon Beal/O & M Ungers; this page Martin Charles; this page Johner, Photonica/Getty Images; this page A.F. Kersting; this page © Crown Copyright/NMR; this page Philippa Lewis/Edifice; this page James Morris; this page Bernhard Leitner; this page Alain de Botton; this page © Jarrold Publishing and Westminster Cathedral, reproduced by permission of the publisher; this page Scala; this page Atelier Michel Jolyot; this page AKG Images/Gérard Degeorge; this page Werner Forman Archive; this page Alain de Botton; this page Agence Ingalill Snitt; this page Scottish National Galleries of Art; this page Fortean Picture Library; this page Lucinda Lambton/Arcaid; this page, this page–this page, this page Cameraphoto Arte, Venezia; this page A.F. Kersting; this page Henning Marks/Edifice; this page Roy. George@Goddess-Athena.org; this page BPK Berlin; this page Museum of Finnish Architecture; this page Christian Richter; this page Tony Morrison/South American Pictures; this page © J. Paul Getty Trust. Used with permission. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library at the Getty Research Institute; this page Dr Petra-Liebl Osborne; this page John Heseltine; this page Permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection; this page Courtauld Institute of Art; this page Werner Forman Archive; this page © Agnes Martin, courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York/Christie’s Images; this page Department of Antiquities, Cyprus; this page Courtauld Institute of Art; this page Filip Dujardin; this page Robert Harding Picture Library; this page Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; this page © FLC; this page Photo Richard Weston; this page Lyndon Douglas; this page P. Kozlowski and T. Cron; this page Margherita Spiluttini; this page Jolly Hotel Lotti; this page Österreichische Nationalbibliothek © Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; this page Fritz von der Schulenburg/Interior Archive; this page RIBA; this page iStockphoto/Nancy Lou; this page Courtauld Institute of Art; this page Cameraphoto Arte Venezia; this page David Foreman/iStockphoto; this page Interior Archive; this page Agence Ingalill Snitt; this page Christian Richter; this page Ivar Hagendoorn; this page J. Kaman/TravelImages.com; this page Krier Kohl Archives; this page Klaus Kinold; this page Norman McGrath; this page Margherita Spiluttini; this page Jan Bitter; this page Agence Ingalill Snitt; this page FBM Design; this page Ian Lawson; this page Domenic Mischol/Andreas Kessler; this page A.F. Kersting; this page Alan Delaney/Hopkins Associates; this page Santiago Calatrava; this page Paul Rocheleau; this page Václav Sedy; this page Dennis Gilbert/View; this page A.F. Kersting; this page Alain de Botton; this page Musée d’Orsay/Bridgeman Art Library; this page Courtauld Institute of Art; this page Richard Weston; this page Alain de Botton; this page Courtauld Institute of Art; this page Janos Kalmar; this page Pino Guidolotti; this page Alain de Botton; this page Huis Ten Bosch Co. Ltd; this page Monkeydave.com; this page François Jordaan and Kelly Henderson http://japanfjordaan.net/; this page Ribersute Co. Japan; this page Alain de Botton; this page François Jordaan and Kelly Henderson; this page Alain de Botton; this page Dennis Gilbert/View; this page © Marcel Gautherot/Instituto Moreira Salles Collection; this page–this page David Robson; this page © photo Katsuhisa Kida/Takaharu and Yui Tezuka, Tezuka Architects; this page Shinkenchiku-Sha; this page Janine Schrijver; this page Jan Bitter; this page © FLC; this page Bernhard Leitner; this page Duncan P. Walker www.walker1890.co.uk; this page, this page Guildhall Library, Corporation of London; this page Fujita Museum of Art; this page Mitsui Bunko Collection; this page Ignacio Martínez; this page, this page Cameraphoto Arte Venice