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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2016
In an interview recorded shortly before his death in 1987, Maxwell Fry recalled the birth of Modern architecture in Great Britain around a half-century earlier. In the course of discussing the work of the Modern Architectural Research (MARS) Group — the society that he had helped to establish in February 1933 and of which he was then the last surviving founder-member — Fry highlighted the links between architects in Britain and their continental European counterparts. Observing that MARS was first established on the basis of an invitation that Wells Coates had received to form a British chapter of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), he noted that the Group had immediately gained an entrée into an international forum that functioned as a unique gathering point for the architectural avant-garde. At the same time, he asserted that membership brought with it commitments that conferred ‘a very serious responsibility’.
CIAM was not, of course, the only conduit for the links that MARS members had with the wider world, but in many ways it was the MARS Group’s relationship with the ‘international community of modern architects […] made visible in the foundation of CIAM’ which defined it and differentiated it from other architectural groupings of its day. Most other such bodies initially coalesced around a single manifesto or exhibition and then quickly fell apart when their members found that they had little in common apart from an enthusiasm for Modernism. By contrast, MARS retained an enduring purpose through its membership of CIAM.
1 Interview with Maxwell Fry, 24 November 1986, author’s transcript reference [T5/2].
2 Powers, Alan, Britain: Modern Architectures in History (London, 2007), p. 36.Google Scholar
3 Darling, Elizabeth, Re-forming Britain: Narratives of Modernity Before Reconstruction (London, 2006), especially pp. 118–40, 173–82.Google Scholar
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6 Interview with Peter Moro, 15 December 1986 [T10/3].
7 London, British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects, [henceforth ‘BAL’], SaG/90/3, Minutes, Central Executive Committee, 17 June 1935.
8 Archival holdings that provide further insight into MARS relations with CIAM are widely scattered, but the collections drawn on here are: BAL; London, Architectural Association, MARS Group Folder [henceforth ‘MGF’]; Zurich, Archives of the Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule [henceforth ‘gta’]; Rotterdam, Van Eesteren Archives, Netherlands Architecture Institute [henceforth ‘NAI’]; Montreal, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Wells Coates Archive [henceforth ‘CCA’]; and Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, CIAM Archive, Frances Loeb Library [henceforth ‘FLL’]. The oral history interviews were carried out by the author with former members of the MARS Group from 1986 to 1996.
9 These include Farouk H. Elgohary, ‘Wells Coates and his Position in the Beginning of the Modern Movement in England’ (doctoral dissertation, University College London, 1966); Campbell, Louise, ‘The MARS Group, 1933–39’, Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 8 (1986), pp. 68–79 Google Scholar; Summerson, John, ‘The MARS Group and the Thirties’, in English Architecture, Public and Private: Essays for Kerry Downes, ed. Bold, John and Chaney, Edward (London, 1993), pp. 303–09 Google Scholar; Gold, John R., The Experience of Modernism: Modern Architects and the Future City, 1928–1953 (London, 1997), pp. 110–12 Google Scholar; Konstanze S. Domhardt, ‘Die CIAM-Debatten zum Stadtzentrum und die amerikanische Nachbarschaftstheorie: Ein transatlantischer Ideenaustausch, 1937–1951’ (doctoral dissertation, ETH, Zürich, 2008), pp. 163–65; Whyte, William, ‘MARS group (act. 1933–1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2012), online edn, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/theme/96308 (accessed on 21 January 2013)Google Scholar; Darling, Elizabeth, ‘Institutionalizing English Modernism: From the Vers Group to MARS’, Architectural History, 55 (2012), pp. 299–320.Google Scholar
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31 This has no direct translation into English, but carries the sense of housing designed for workers on the lowest incomes.
32 Gold, Experience of Modernism, p. 52.
33 May, in particular, was strongly influenced by Garden City thinking. He had worked with both Theodor Fischer in Munich and Raymond Unwin in London, regarding his time spent at Unwin’s office as ‘the foundation on which the whole of my work is based’. This is quoted in Creese, Walter, The Search for Environment: the Garden City, Before and After (New Haven, 1966), p. 316 Google Scholar. See also Domhardt, Konstanze S., ‘The Garden City Idea in the CIAM Discourse on Urbanism: a Path to Comprehensive Planning’, Planning Perspectives, 27 (2012), pp. 173–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 Around 10,000 of the new dwellings that were created using Existenzminimum space standards were equipped with the industrialized and ergonomic ‘Frankfurt kitchen’, which was intended to modernize and simplify household chores. See Zukowsky, John, ‘Das Neue Frankfurt’, in The Many Faces of Modern Architecture: Building in Germany Between the World Wars, ed. Zukowsky, John (Munich, 1994), pp. 56–71.Google Scholar
35 Woud, Van der, Het Niewe Bouwen Internationale, p. 60 Google Scholar. This was scarcely representative of the membership. Forty of the plans came from Germany alone.
36 Gold, , Experience of Modernism, p. 61.Google Scholar
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43 See, for example, Darling, Re-forming Britain; Powers, Britain; Darling, Elizabeth, ‘“Finella”, Mansfield Forbes, Raymond McGrath, and Modernist Architecture in Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 50.1 (2011), pp. 125–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darling, ‘Institutionalizing English Modernism’.
44 The Garden Cities movement had consciously rebuilt the internationalism briefly severed by the First World War, with an active overseas programme and transnational interchange of speakers and ideas throughout the 1930s. See Hardy, , From Garden Cities to New Towns, p. 170.Google Scholar
45 See the arguments put forward in Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire, pp. 1–25; also Mordaunt Crook, J., The Dilemma of Style (London, 1987), pp. 222–24.Google Scholar
46 For previous accounts of this sequence of events, see Campbell, , ‘The MARS Group, 1933–39’, pp. 69–70 Google Scholar; Gold, , The Experience of Modernism, pp. 110–12Google Scholar; Domhardt, , ‘Die CIAM-Debatten zum Stadtzentrum und die amerikanische Nachbarschaftstheorie’, pp. 163–65Google Scholar; Darling, ‘Institutionalizing English Modernism’.
47 There remains no comprehensive account of Shand’s career, but obituaries published shortly after his death in 1960 give some impression of his polymath qualities. See, for example, Betjeman, John, ‘P. Morton Shand’, Architectural Review, 128 (1960), pp. 325–28.Google Scholar
48 He acted on the suggestion of an acquaintance, the American architect Gabriel Guevrekian, who had been appointed as CIAM’s first Secretary-General at La Sarraz in 1928.
49 MGF, letter from P. Morton Shand to Sigfried Giedion, January 1929 (no precise date given).
50 MGF, letter from Giedion to Shand, 7 May 1929.
51 See the collection of essays gathered together in Robertson, Howard and Yerbury, F. R., Travels in Modern Architecture, 1925–1930 (London, 1989).Google Scholar
52 Rees, Verner O., ‘The Royal Horticultural Hall’, Architects’journal, 68 (1928), p. 573.Google Scholar
53 MGF contains the correspondence between the principal actors, namely Wells Coates, Howard Robertson, Patrick Cutbush and Sigfried Giedion.
54 MGF, letter from Giedion to Howard Robertson, 20 September 1929.
55 Ibid.
56 The meeting was attended by Robertson, Rowland Pierce, Patrick Cutbush, Rolf Hellberg, Frederick Towndrow, Joseph Emberton, Charles Holden, Thomas Tait, Ronald Duncan, K. A. H. Bayes, Louis de Soissons and Verner Rees. None would later become MARS members. CCA, letter from Robertson to Coates, 5 May 1933.
57 For more on Coates’ background, see Darling, Elizabeth, Wells Coates (London, 2012).Google Scholar
58 Republished letter from Giedion to Coates, Architects’ Journal, 80 (1934), p. 425.
59 CCA, Minutes of a meeting between Wells Coates, E. Maxwell Fry, D. Pleydell-Bouverie and P. Morton Shand held at 28 Sutherland Terrace, W2, relative to the formation of a British group of the association of the International Congress of Modern Architecture, 28 February 1933.
60 Two others, the publisher Hubert de Cronin Hastings and the writer John Gloag, were informed about the meeting.
61 Minutes, pp. 1–2 (see note 59).
62 Yorke, F. R. S., ‘Modern Architecture’, The Times, 25 April 1933, p. 10.Google Scholar
63 BAL, ArO/1/1/21/i.
64 Interview with J. M. Richards, 3 December 1986 [T11/4].
65 Ibid. [T11/7].
66 Melvin, Jeremy, F.R.S. Yorke and the Evolution of English Modernism (Chichester, 2003), p. 8.Google Scholar
67 It included Howard Robertson, Oliver Hill, Grey Wornum and Joseph Emberton. See Minutes of Meeting, 28 February 1933 (note 59).
68 Interview with J. M. Richards, 3 December 1986 [T11/1].
69 Cantacuzino, Sherban, Wells Coates: a Monograph (London, 1978), p. 48 Google Scholar. John Betjeman declared that Shand was ‘no Fascist or Communist: he was a strong individualist’: see Betjeman, , ‘P. Morton Shand’, p. 326.Google Scholar
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72 The actual numbers admitted to practice in Great Britain were extremely small: see Jackson, Anthony, The Politics of Architecture (London, 1970), p. 34.Google Scholar
73 He handed over to Misha Black, who took final responsibility for the event in January 1938.
74 gta, 42-K-1937-Carter, letter from Edward Carter to Giedion, undated, c. January 1937.
75 Interview with Peter Moro, 15 December 1986 [T10/3].
76 Cantacuzino, , Wells Coates, p. 48 Google Scholar. See also below, note 116.
77 Quoted by Pearlman, Jill, Inventing American Modernism: Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus legacy at Harvard (Charlottesville, VA, 2007), p. 74 Google Scholar. The speech itself is available at: Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Walter Gropius papers, Houghton Library. ‘Speech at farewell dinner at Trocadero’, series 1, 11 (9 March 1937).
78 The interviewee requested that these comments should remain unattributed.
79 Elgohary, ‘Wells Coates’, 74.
80 gta, 42-K-1934 Wells Coates, letter from Wells Coates to Sigfried Giedion, 27 January 1934. In passing, it is worth noting that on 8 February 1934, shortly after Coates wrote his letter, Mendelsohn and Chermayeff won the competition to design the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill — widely regarded as one of the most outstanding Modernist public buildings constructed in Britain during the inter-war years.
81 The history of the German group and its members within CIAM during the latter’s formative years has yet to be fully explored. Available documentation shows that Mendelsohn never played a significant role within CIAM. He did not, for instance, attend the Congress at La Sarraz and had not been active since a CIRPAC meeting in Berlin in 1931, where he overtly distanced himself from CIAM’s emerging internationalist initiative on the socialist city. For more information, see gta, 42-04-1-2-5/6, 58-59, Protokoll der Ausserordentlichen Tagung der intern. Kongresse für neues Bauen, Berlin 4. und 5. Juni 1931.
82 gta, 42-K-1934 Wells Coates, letter from Wells Coates to Sigfried Giedion, 27 January 1934.
83 See Heinze-Greenberg, Ita, ‘An Artistic European Utopia at the Abyss of Time: the Mediterranean Academy Project, 1931–34’, Architectural History, 45 (2002), pp. 441–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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85 Valuable insight into Coates’ complex personality can be found in Darling, Wells Coates.
86 Shortly afterwards he would describe himself as being the only ‘born revolutionary of his generation’. Quoted in Zevi, Bruno, Erich Mendelsohn: the Complete Works (Basel, 1999), p. xiv.Google Scholar
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98 Powers, Britain, p. 14.
99 Sert, Can Our Cities Survive?, p. 6.
100 NAI, EEST IV.66[2], letter from Wells Coates to Van Eesteren, 21 April 1933.
101 NAI, EEST IV.66[5], letter from Coates to Cornelius Van Eesteren, 3 July 1933.
102 See John R., Gold, ‘By Land and Sea’, in CIAM 4. The Functional City, ed. Harbusch, Gregor (forthcoming, 2014)Google Scholar. They were joined by a further British delegate, Harold Elvin, an interested observer who had gained a personal recommendation from Shand.
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105 Ibid., p. 4. MARS would retain for several years a view of its membership of CIAM as being ‘probationary’; see BAL, SaG 90/2, ‘Routine Report of Central Executive Committee’, section 6, issued February 1935.
106 BAL, SaG 90/2, MARS Circular Letter III, 19 September 1933, p. 1.
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109 BAL, Aro/94/1, letter from Giedion to Shand, 3 May 1934.
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115 BAL, Aro/1/2/16/ii.
116 CCA, letter from Walter Gropius to Cyril Sweett (but addressed to Coates), 26 December 1935.
117 BAL, Aro/1/4/6/ii.
118 Interview with William Tatton Brown, 5 December 1986 [T15/1].
119 Ibid.
120 Collins, George R., ‘Linear Planning Throughout the World’, journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 18 (1959), pp. 38–53 and 74–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more information about the formulation of the Tatton Browns’ plan, see Gold, John R., ‘The MARS Plans for London, 1933–1942: Plurality and Experimentation in the City Plans of the Early British Modern Movement’, Town Planning Review, 66 (1995), pp. 243–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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122 BAL file: ArO/1/2/25/i.
123 Letter from William Tatton Brown to author, 27 September 1992.
124 Samuel, Fry, Moholy-Nagy, Breuer, Shand, Emberton, William and Aileen Tatton Brown, Arup, Kaufmann, Lubetkin, Hastings and Goldfinger: as listed in BAL, SaG 90/2, Minutes of MARS Meeting, 10 June 1937.
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130 He was Secretary of the pan-artistic Novembergruppe in 1924 and a prominent member of the Kollektiv für sozialistisches Bauen (Collective for a Socialist Architecture). See A. Zeese, ‘Die vergessene Moderne: Arthur Korn. Architekt, Urbanist, Lehrer (1891–1978). Leben und Werk eines jiidischen Avantgardisten in Berlin und London’ (doctoral dissertation, University of Vienna, 2010), pp. 169-230.
131 Spechtenhauser, Klaus and Weiss, Daniel, ‘Teige and the CIAM’, in Teige, 1900–1951: l’enfant terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde, ed. Dluhosch, Eric and Svácha, Rostislav (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 216–55 (p. 234).Google Scholar
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137 BAL, SaG 90/1, Minutes, CIRPAC meeting, 10 July 1938.
138 gta archives/ETH Zurich: 42-X-119 to 42-X-126.
139 Scheduled for 19–21 September 1939 on a theme eventually agreed as ‘air pollution’, it was cancelled on 7 September.
140 Respectively, Sert, Can Our Cities Survive?, and Corbusier, Le La Charte d’Athènes (Paris, 1943).Google Scholar
141 Interview with H. T. Cadbury-Brown, 15th December 1986 [T2/7].
142 Delegates and participants nominated by MARS would play a significant role in directing attention away from the straitjacket of the ‘Functional City’. Arguably, too, they also played a role, as individuals and as part of Team X, in the demise of CIAM. See Landau, Royston, ‘The End of CIAM and the Role of the English’, Rassegna, 52 (1992), pp. 40–47 Google Scholar; Pedret, ‘CIAM and the Emergence of Team 10 Thinking’.
143 Interview with Sir John Summerson, 4 December 1986 [T12/4].
144 Interview with Lord Esher, 15 April 1987 [T4/4].
145 Interview with Percy Johnson-Marshall, 9 and 18 December 1986 [T7/12].
146 They gave CIAM a resilience that was tested on various occasions and almost certainly speeded the resuscitation of the international Modern Movement after the war.
147 Granovetter, Mark, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties: a Network Theory Revisited’, Sociological Theory, 1 (1983), pp. 201–33 [pp. 201–02].CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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149 Giedion gave a series of lectures as Charles Eliot Norton Professor during the academic year 1938–39, which served as the basis for his Space, Time and Architecture: the Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1941).
150 Interview with Arthur Ling, 30 January 1987 [T8/3].
