Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of ArchitectureTwentieth (centenary) edition edited by Dan Cruickshank with Australian contributions by Jennifer Taylor, published by Architectural Press/Reed Educational, hardback, $195.
Review by Davina Jackson  Left: Frank L. Pearson’s drawing to resolve his father John’s design for St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane.
Conceive this: a pair of Banister Fletchers (father and son authors of the first edition published in 1896) compelled 100 years forward and across the Atlantic Ocean to see their classic reference work, now in its 20th and much expanded edition, named ‘Book of the Century’ by the American Institute of Architects. Some of that scenario is fact. But if the fictional aspect were true—that Professor Banister and his later-knighted son Banister Flight could really assess the latest version of their book—what would strike them about it? Certainly they would not recognise much of their original work—titled A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. Most of the 159 original drawings were redone before the 1920s, apart from superb illustrations made with collotype photography (some included here). The Fletchers’ words are also long gone—there are now 37 writers and an editorial team of five. Otherwise, the current version is much more bountiful: there are six times as many pages (1794 now and 293 originally), a larger page format (245 by 190mm compared with the initial 180 by 120mm), abundant mono and half-tone illustrations, and hectares of text describing the architectural wonders of a century those Victorian scholars did not really experience, in continents and countries to which they also paid scant attention. This century’s astonishing expansion of architectural knowledge, significant buildings, types, materials and techniques, as summarised here, would surely (to use a quaint English term) gobsmack them. Yet this encyclopedia can’t escape the limitations which arise with any attempt to cut simultaneously along the passage of history and across the scope of the world—and then report what is found in the linear format of a book. Like Walter-Kruft on architectural theory or Russell on philosophy, Banister Fletcher lurches between periods and places with disconcerting abruptness. And, as pomo philosophers like Lacan and Foucault inconveniently remind us, every human gaze is flecked by specks of blindness or ignorance that skew all records of history. Any current reader of an early Fletcher would recognise their nuances, and it’s good sport to also spot-check the 20th edition’s inclusions and omissions. The (poorly indexed) material on post-war Australia emphasises architects of the 60s/70s Sydney school, pays skimpy attention to Murcutt (not illustrated), ignores the Clares, Katsalidis and Leplastrier, and is light on for architects under 50. It’s diverting to cross-check Jennifer Taylor’s summaries with Philip Drew’s notes for the Macmillan Dictionary of Art and Francoise Fromenot’s listings of Australians in the new Dictionnaire de l’Architecture du XX Siècle. Intriguingly, her Parisian purview highlights Buhrich, Myers, Klopper, Andrews, Clare and Leplastrier but the eyesight’s dim on DCM, Jackson and Cox. Davina Jackson is editor of Architecture Australia. | Gordon Cullen: Visions of Urban Design
By David Gosling with a foreword by Sir Norman Foster, published by Academy Editions, hardback, $150.
Review by Barry Maitland
The collection of theories, techniques and attitudes bundled up in the term townscape has been one of the most pervasive influences in the development of urban design thinking. It has also been curiously elusive and indeterminate in its practical results. Colin Rowe castigated it as being over-concerned with “accidents” and with a “taste for topography” without any “ideal referent”, resulting in a tendency “to provide sensation without plan, to appeal to the eye and not to the mind”; while also acknowledging its extensive impact on practitioners and theorists. At the heart of this enigmatic influence lies the character of the man who gave it its name, visual language and manifesto. This beautiful book records Gordon Cullen’s life, work and ideas; lavishly illustrated by the drawings which, in the end, were perhaps their most substantial achievement. This book traces six decades of Cullen’s career, from the 1930s when he worked for such key figures of British modernism as Raymond McGrath and Berthold Lubetkin, up to his death in 1994. The author, David Gosling, met Cullen in 1973 at a point of crisis in the latter’s life. His period of greatest influence, through articles in The Architectural Review and the 1961 publication of Townscape, was past and he felt that his ideas were being ignored and trivialised. In addition, he was going blind. Gosling involved him in a commission to design a new town, Maryculter, in Scotland, and later worked with him on many significant planning and design projects. Through this work, Gosling gave Cullen the opportunity to revitalise his career and to apply many of the theories and ideas he had proposed in his earlier publications. The author gives a lucid account of these projects in precise prose which is also full of humanity; especially in recounting Cullen’s struggle to recover his sight. There are moments of humour, too, as in the description of Cullen’s habit of protesting at boring client meetings by lying down on the floor and pointedly falling asleep, while his colleagues, unfazed, continued their negotiations. Gosling’s experience with Cullen is most telling in his account of the masterplanning of the Isle of Dogs in the London Docklands in the early 1980s, for there they disagreed on the extent to which their scheme should prescribe a framework for development. Cullen favoured a looser, more inspirational plan, a view which accorded with the authorities, who wanted nothing that might impede investment. Subsequent events showed how right Gosling had been in suspecting the weakness of this approach, as Cullen’s ideas were swept aside by unsympathetic projects. If this episode perhaps supports the view that Cullen’s townscape theory lacked some essential features of a successful urban design strategy, his drawings nevertheless are utterly convincing in communicating the values which he advocated throughout his life. Stunning in the way they could breathe life into the simplest of urban design ideas and imbue them with a rich sense of place, they are an extraordinarily rich catalogue of visual qualities. Having been persuaded as a young art student to turn to architecture, he remained an artist throughout his life and, on the basis of this book, surely the finest architectural artist of his time. Professor Barry Maitland is the Dean of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. |
