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Saturday 26 May 2012

Notebook

That gathering impetus was perfectly encapsulated as early as 1934 by a young architectural writer answering the question “What Would Wren Have Built Today?” After diagnosing the City of London as overcrowded, badly lit and generally impossible to work in either efficiently or pleasantly, he went on:

 “We must give up the building rule which restricts the height of buildings, and we must not only do that, but we must build office blocks twice as high as St Paul’s, and have green spaces and wide roads in between the blocks… Two dozen skyscrapers, though they would obviously dwarf St Paul’s, would not take away from its beauty if they were beautiful themselves. They would alter the skyline, certainly, yet we should not sacrifice health, time and comfort to one skyline because we have not the courage to create another."

The author of this confident, uncompromising clarion call? John Betjeman, that future doughty conservationist.

David Kynaston, “Austerity Britain, 1945-51”.

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