Architectural History in Britain

At one level, British architectural history is stronger than ever before, yet on the other it suffers from worrying areas of neglect and decay. As the recent right-wing spat over Eurozone economic policy revealed only too well, the continuing lack of integration between British intellectual life and that on the continent runs the risk of bifurcating still further. Furthermore, the infusion of Americanised neo-liberal social and economic policies—now for instance wrecking the financial prospects of British students and their universities—seems at odds with the values of European collaboration. In the case of architectural history, the past really could well be becoming a rather different country in Britain than it is on mainland Europe.

It is worth rehearsing the historical background. The tradition of architectural history in Britain as it emerged in the late-nineteenth century was essentially that of gentlemanly scholars like James Fergusson or Banister Fletcher, with the doyen (and last in the line) being Sir John Summerson, who for decades also presided over the Soane Museum in London. Their approach was strongly empirical and anti-theoretical, but in time this came to be affected by the German Idealist methodology which arrived with Nikolaus Pevsner, Ernst Gombrich, and other émigrés in the 1930s. The two strands forged a somewhat uneasy pact from the 1950s through the figure of Reyner Banham, a doctoral student of Pevsner’s, while Banham in turn helped to spread an idealised vision of the USA to which many British architectural historians then escaped to if they could. Amongst those who went over to the States for higher pay and prestige were Kenneth Frampton, Robin Middleton, Alan Colquhoun, Howard Burns, Robert Maxwell, Tony Vidler, Joseph Rykwert, Bob Evans (for part of the year), and of course Banham himself. Hence by the mid-1970s, a good many of the leading exponents of British architectural history and theory were to be found on the western side of the Atlantic.

It also meant that, by the 1970s, architectural history was in a relatively weak position in Britain, especially as it had fallen behind other academic subjects within British universities in embracing new ideas from post-structuralist philosophy and cultural studies. But there were stirrings against this sense of isolation. The 1970s were also the period when the brilliant critiques of twentieth-century modernism by Manfredo Tafuri and others became available in English, raising the possibility for the first time of architectural historians adopting an overtly political stance. At the Architectural Association, the full-scale impact of post-structuralism from the mid-1970s started to change the landscape for architectural education, not least in history and theory. The first major change in Britain, however, came about in 1981 when Adrian Forty and Mark Swenarton set up the MSc History of Modern Architecture (now the MA Architectural History) at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. It was the first postgraduate course in architectural history in Britain, and amongst the first anywhere in the world. I was fortunate to be among the first cohort of students on the course. Its key innovation was the integration of the wider analysis of politics, economics, and social processes into the subject of architectural history; this stemmed more from the impetus provided by the British strand of cultural studies, as led by scholars like Raymond Williams, but was also fully aware of Tafuri and continental critical theory. Across the decades, the Bartlett Masters course has taught a high percentage of those now responsible for architectural history and theory in British architectural schools, as well as in many universities worldwide.

Indeed, if there is another course which has had the same global impact on the subject as the Bartlett’s MA Architectural History, then I haven’t heard of it. All told, the course has helped to increase the number and importance of architectural historians within British schools, and yet it has also played its role in some unintended consequences. The first has been a general move away from the detailed study of buildings as actual physical entities, a departure which Pevsner and Banham would have decried. Instead, the growing tendency has been to look more broadly at the urban and cultural phenomenon of everyday life in terms of how these are produced by, and also help to produce, our buildings and cities. This approach has resulted in a great many fascinating studies that subtly incorporate ideas from gender theory, postcolonial theory, spatial theory, psychoanalytical theory, etc. What however seems now to be regarded as boring and reactionary is the study of buildings as artefacts themselves. This tendency is not confined to the Bartlett, and can be seen in many other British architectural schools, where the cultural/urban/social approach to architectural history is often excellent but has become a new orthodoxy. As such, there is a worry that the success of this approach might further marginalise the significance of older buildings in the minds of forthcoming generations of students.

The second consequence has been a conspicuous decline of what might be termed ‘deeper history’, given that there is now an increasing focus on twentieth-century modernism (and even contemporary twenty-first-century conditions). Indeed, there seems to be a virtual absence of research on earlier periods. Within British architectural history, it means there is no longer the likes of John Harvey and other acolytes poring over the minutiae of medieval cathedrals, nor the likes of Howard Colvin extolling the virtuous arc of neo-classical tradition. Up until the mid-1980s there were also regular and valuable interpretations of major Victorian and Edwardian architects, such as Andrew Saint’s monograph on Norman Shaw, or by other scholars writing on Pugin, Butterfield, Ashbee, Unwin, etc. These too have almost dried up, and the fact that Saint is currently simply updating his own book on Shaw is another sign of how times have changed. Also significantly, even those historians who previously might have been the ones who focused on Georgian or Victorian architecture—i.e., the fogeys and conservationists—are now turning their attention to twentieth-century modernism, particularly its post-war variety. What it all means is that there are now relatively few scholars of architectural history in Britain dealing with pre-modernist architecture. While this is perhaps not unique, and can be seen also in (say) North America, it does appear particularly marked in Britain.

As a result of various factors, such as the importance of the government’s periodic audit of university research, the practice of architectural history in Britain is now almost entirely located within universities, with a corresponding decline in contribution from other bodies such as English Heritage (until recently a major training ground for architectural historians who worked in an empirical, archaeological manner). So where then does this leave the future of British architectural history? The pattern sketched out above seems to be the way things are likely to head even more—i.e., an increasing interest in recent history at the expense of the number of scholars looking further back in time, plus a growing emphasis on research work within the better-funded research universities.

If I were looking for an emerging field where Britain leads other countries in continental Europe, and indeed the world, it would be in design research. This of course is a broad term with many definitions, but perhaps the most relevant aspect here is the link that is now being made between architectural history and design practices in a freer but extremely scholarly manner. A leading exponent is Jonathan Hill from the Bartlett (another graduate of the Bartlett History Masters) whose research is becoming increasingly historical in its study of eighteenth-century landscape architecture, while also being fully involved in designing new projects for today. Architectural historians have always been wary of being too instrumental in their approach, and have tended perhaps to be overly dismissive of design thinking—a problem that seems even more of curse in continental European architectural history. But in my view the prospect of scholarly design research that so openly and rigorously incorporates the strength of architectural history offers a highly promising way forward.

Murray Fraser
Bartlett School of Architecture
University College London
UK