_rural & urban_architecture between two cultures_book

8/13/2019 _Rural & Urban_Architecture Between Two Cultures_BOOK

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forst publtshed 2010''''' -ParkSqUilrll. Mol:on Park. Abu''OdOr', Oxon OX144RNSomul .aneously published In th e USA and Canada''''' -70 Madoson Ave, New York. NY 10016, USARoutledge I .an 1tJlJNlfI of me & fI IS G c >l47 an nfotmC 2010 selectoon and edItonal mauer, Ananocat. other means. now known Of hereafler onvented. If>Clud,ngphotO


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Chapler 1

Rural and urbanmilieuxndrew allantyne and Gillian Inee

ucolicsThere is nothing goo to be had In the country said William Hazlrtt or rfthere IS they will nol lei you have 1t 1 For Hazlitt the urbanite the countrysidewas outside. It was outside of SOCIety a place where everyone h te oneanother - and outside of C Vlhzation Their common mo e of l ife is a system ofwretchedness and self-denial. like wh t we read of among barbarous tribes.You l iv e o ut o f th e w or ld . Part of Hazlin s motivation for saying such thingswas the pervasive sentimentality WIth which the urban world has treated thecountryside Since ancient Imes. The shepherds who sing to one another inVirgil s Eclogues lovelorn in an Atcad 8 d ri pp in g w it h h one y a nd b at he d Ingolden light. are as remote from everyday encounters with agricultural workersas the shepherds in rokeback Mountain- a SIOry that was originally publishedin the ult imate urbane environment of the ew Yorker magazine and whichwas then further Iyricized by Hollywood actors and cinematographic glamour.:The countryside is repeatedly presented as the place to go for true feeling. A tleast that is how i t i s p re se nt ed to t he u rba n p op ul ati on th at e at s f oo d t ha tcomes in packets and tins has no songs to sing and that thinks there is ap ro bl em w he n i t is hit by the smell o f cow manure. These days the urbanpopulation is most of us and the countryside is less clearly separate than itwas in Hazliu s day. There are still different worlds. which have different valuesystems and patterns of behaviour. but they can overlap and erupt unexpectedly. One s study In a house in a small village may be filled with books andideas that have passed through cities and a broadband connection might oltenmake the actual location seem insignificant so long as one can connect to theworld outside. B ut - to take a personal example - in Asquins. where this book


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1\( ,I 11 .ul lov l lh I I I I ~ I lllll,HlI 11101 ily I , 1111 ,1 1 tt ,1 1Iho (:OUlllly:,nlu, hili (;IIltl1l,llIy luuls ~ ; I J I \ 1 1 0 1 W h H 1 I ~ 1 C 1 1 y ~ I W , MllIlJl 1descllbod the CITy as a lhealre, where wo see oUlel people on Ihu plll1ll< ,tllllo.and where we act out our Identities. panly to establish our place In Iho 5Chemoof things, and partly so as to show ourselves who we a r e ~ In Ihe UnitedKingdom today we expect a place that s ty les I tsel f a CIty 1 be the centre oflocal government, have a university, a series of shopping centres and cinemas,at least one lheatre, an abundance of restaurants offenng cuisine from aU overthe world and more than one hospItal. These features do notqurteamount to adefinit ion, but they are how we would generally recognize a city if we foundourselves In one. People living in the Roman Empire or medieval Europe had,withIn the context of theIr own lime, expectations of what a city should offer.In a much quoted passage, Pausanias dismissed the claims of urban status fora settlement in second-century Greece:

the city of Panopeus in Phokis: if you can call i t a city when i t has no statebuildings, no training-ground, no theatre, and no market-square, when ithas no running water at a water-head and they live on the edge of a torrentIn hovels like mountain huts.ti

DiSCUSSing this description of Panopeus. Moses Finley explained thai Pausa-nias audience would have understood. The aesthetic-architectural definlllonwas a shorthand for a polit ical and SOCIal defiOition .l The buildings mean thatwe readily recognize the city, but they are nol what makes the city. The socIOl-ogISt Phlhp Abrams warns us about what happens when we do nol pay attent ion to our tendency to reity - to turn f luid and complex act iVit ies Into simplerand more solid-seeming things. With reference 10 the modern context hewrites:

The material and especially the VIsual presence of towns seems to haveimpelled a reification in whIch the town as a phySical object IS lurned intoa taken-lor-granted social obJecl and a captivating focus of analysis in itsown f lghl . Thus Harr is and Pullman began an inf luential paper on thenalure of the c ity by reacting in jus t that way to the immediately givenurban phenomenon. As one approaches a city and notices its tall buildingsr ising above the surrounding land and one continues into the c ity andobserves the crowds of people hurrying to and fro past stores, theatres,banks and other establishments, one is naturally struck by the contrastWith the rural countryside .

BUI the town and country were antithetical in the minds of ancient peeples too.A Roman rehef sculpture Juxtaposes the town of Aveuano. houses packed

111 ,10, II . w lh 1l '1 11 tI CJ ,1I1:0I1I11Iy: du dl ln , ~ . G o , I 1 1 1 1 01 v,lI.ls ~ . l l u l l \ : J1 ,lw, I t , ual ,III llll,tS Slllll)(llloo lho lHlClonl clly ,, Ihe ul >1m settlement'.11'. ,II Illll 11111 0: 01 II contInuum 01 development which leads us back 10 Ihehmnlul ,m{l tho lsolaled cOllage. Clearly the city IS nol lhe same as the countryside. but II IS lInked to It, and the edge IS not necessanly c1earty defmed. Thesearch lor a umversal definition of urbanism has left many academic fields littered with the vanquished. We could try saying, for example, that cit ies arelarger than villages, and most of the tIme thIS IS true; but there were villages Innineteenth-century RUSSIa which were btgger than some European towns. Frederic Maitland declared that the borough communitywas corporate; the villagecommunIty is nol , II and it is true that a charter was a feature of many medievalsettlements In England. However, there were settlements in medieval Englandwhich were economically vibrant and whICh were urban 001 did not have acharter: Birmingham, for example. l MedIeval Nottingham, well-known as thestage where perhaps the most famous medieval romance, Robin Hood, wasplayed oul, had a sheriff but no charter unt il one was signed by Queen Vicloriain 1897.

The analyses of politicaladministrative functions, social stratificatIOnand economic functions of urban settlements have led many scholars acrossdisciplines 10 say that urban settlements can only be defined in political, socialand economIC terms. In such a view the 00111 form of the urban sett lement is aphysical manifestation of these dynamic generative forces. For example, PaulWhealley said that I t is impossible to do more Ihan characterize Ihe concept ofurbanism as compounded of a series of Ideal types, SOCIal, political and ec -nomIC and other Instilutions whICh have combined In different ways In differentcultures at different limes .l

Central-place theoryUrban settlementsplay the role of a central place for the surroundIng countryside. The current interest in cIty-systems is the direct result of Walter Christaller s central-place theory of 1933, whIch claSSifies places accordIng to whatthey do. rather than what they look like - a pragmat is t move. Chr is taller stheoretical assumption is that a town acts as a central place for the countrysideand, although population size is important. it is not a measure of centrality; centrality can be measured only in terms of the goods and services offered. Thisf its the model of the ancient city with ItS network of rural settlements supporting an urban centre. From this premise Chnstaller derived two concepts, Thefirst is threshold population which is the minimum population that is requiredto bring about the good or service being offered. For example. a settlementwould need to be a certain size belore it could sustaIn a bakery or a school. The

5


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there were only two family groups at Paliochora capable of financing churchbuilding. The churches. constructed between the fourteenth and sixteenth centur ies. represent successive generations of just the two families buildingchurches at the settlement. The churches were demonstrations not only ofp iety but also of status.3< In the church-building programme at Paliochora wesee economic expression of wealth and diversification which would call into

-Sketchrll Onltr\ tlon ofchurch group Itthe highest pointof th e ttlementPillochor. onkyther.

'111 '.II,,n III Illloll .111111 . 'I 1 . I I I l ~ h')I.1 I ,I : 11111 11 1 111 II snttlelllQI11 with 27c 1 1 1 1 1 l : 1 1 ~ ; dOlO nol h'u1llko a VIII[l ju

NetworksPallochora and Its generation of settlements belong to an era when the Aegeanwas politically fragmented following Ihe events of the Fourth Crusade and thesack of COnSlanlinople In 1204. They do not settle into our usual categories ofthe rural and Ihe urban, and make us suspend our laxonomy.35 In the perIOdImmediately before the Fourth Crusade central and southern Greece had beenhighly urbanIzed WIth a networkof urban senlements linked to the trade routesIn the Aegean. and In particular oriented towards Constantinople. The disrup.lions of the Fourth Crusade made thiS network collapse. Urban hierarchiesreqUire a large geographical area 10 develop into a network, as well as peacefulconditions and politICal cohesion. In the pre-modem context they havedeveloped best WIthIn tile boundaries of empires that have established peacewithin their lemtlOrY. Tile urban settlements of the High Roman Empire are agood case In polnt, where hIerarchieS developed in the regIOns and whereRome acted as a 'pflmate' City.

In the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade some parts of central andsouthern Greece were conquered by French Crusaders, and most of the restby Venetians. PolitIcal fragmentallOn and aggression meant that defencebecame Important in the region for the first time in centuries. and settlementsmigrated up hills to sItes that provided natural defences. These settlementswere not hnked Into a developed hierarchy in Ihe same ways as the senlements before the events of the Fourth Crusade had been; and many of themoperated by controlling only their w hinterland. The political fragmentattoncaused the urban settlements in effect to regress to an earlier stage in urbanevolution.

There are four factors, or combinations of factors which can causethe development of a settlement (its preurban nucleus) - military/defence. religion/cult centre, agnculture and trade. Cult centres can act as a stimulus to thedevelopment of urban settlements. This was the case with many classicalcities in Greece and it has also been a feature of medieval Christianity.J7 Agriculture or irrigation is seen as the principal generator in the so--called 'hydrauliccultures' such as those of the Fertile Crescent and in particular Mesopotami a.Local trade can result in an urban settlement acting as a redistribution centrefor its hinterland even in a barter culture. In studies of the medieval period,long-distance trade IS associated With the work of the Belgian historian HenriPirenne. who saw the flow of trade as the most important generator of cities,and smaller settlementS,JlI The Pirenne theSIS accounts for many Scandinavian


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ddy::' talul, dlllli l l LJIIII I] 1\1I1[jdUIII IIIult) I:: ::'1IIpI 1:;lIlyly IItllu 11111 1 II IIIproportion ot the pOpUIallOl1 lhal IS engi:lged III a surprrSlngly Slll)[I,1I r,,,o\I Ioccupations In lown and coul11ry - rncluding servrce sectors, such as letdll,health and education. The countryside depends on money that comes in tromthe towns, whether f rom visi tors or f rom people who live in the countrysidebut who make their living through a town-based business. These people c an b ea mixed blessing, because although their money helps to sustain local services,they are absent much of the time and cannot pull their weight in sustaining thelocal culture, They also drive up house prices, perhaps beyond the level thatpeople earning a local wage can afford, and we can be faced with charming,well-maintained dormitory villages that are picture-perfect images of countryliving but which function entirely as satellites of the town. A house could looklike an isolated outpost, but could nevertheless function in ways that have asignificantly more urban character than the dwellings at Paliochora.

The great distinction between the town and the country is not somuch the types of objects that we find there, as the intensity in which they areto be found. The great qualitative difference is in the distances betweenpeople, which are much greater in the countryside than in the town. The consequences of that have repercussions in the provision of local services: biggerhospitals and schools in cities, because more people are within easy reach ofthem, closer proximity to a wider range of shops, dentists and swimmingpools. In the country one has space, and facil it ies that are a drive away. InEurope we have dense city centres, often based round a medieval core, butwhereas the medieval city would have had a defensive wall, our cit ies haveblurred edges that fade away gradually, unless local legislation protects a greenbelt to preserve an illusion of countryside that is nevertheless within easy commuting distance

There is an essay by Michel Serres that envisages the city in termsof the dense packing of its inhabitants. It is a study of the foundation of Rome,as described by Livy.9 The various actions of crowds, which culminate inRome s foundation, are described in Livy s text. and summarized by Serres,who sees the individuals in the crowds as molecules in matter, and as thecrowd becomes volatile or consolidates itself, it undergoes behavioural changesthat correspond with the phase transitions in matter. A phase transition is thechange that happens when a substance turns from a gas to a liquid, or from aliquid to a solid, and vice versa. There is no chemical change, but the materialbehaves differently. We know it best from water, which is a liquid at room temperature, but turns to steam when we heat it u p, a nd to ice when we cool itdown In steam the water is H20 just as it is H20 when it is ice. But in the icethe molecules are closely packed and arrange themselves in crystals, whereasin steam there is much more space between the water molecules, with thevarious elements of air interspersed between them The difference is a matter

III 1IIltm ,Ity 1 11 IIOf'. ',1;,,10 1 11I1 w,rll. IIlu rlorll


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makes a very clear i llustration of the dif ference between 'ar t h istory ' and'material culture', The picture's 'content' from the point of view of art history isabsolutely rural, but from the point of view of making and consuming it is ametropolitan artefact through and through. Exactly the same therapeutic effectis expected from buildings in the countryside when they act as a retreat fromthe town. A cottage that housesa rural worker's family has a range of demandsmade it that includes security and shelter as the most important. A cottageorne might be much the same building so far as its physical fabric is concerned.but i t wi ll be used completely differently. It is likely to be used seasonally, andinstantly becomes a villa rather than a house. Its inhabitants will not need tospend the long winter evenings confined in it, so they make less exactingdemands for shelter, On the other hand, since the point of it is to put them in acontemplative and aesthetically reflective state of mind, tokens of rusticity

L5John Constable,Th ornfield118261. oil oncanvas

; \ I 11\1 v,lli I tll\ OVlK; ItIV 1011J111,, 1 1110 IOIIUiI1 10 I I0I1COS ( lscllssedby SIOW,III AblJoll III ChaplOi ;J lallinle Ihls category of bUildings 111atiook likecottages, but which lunctlon as very small villas Their main purpose seems tohave been the cultivation of a poetic sensibility. Dana Arnold, who has herselfstudied Georgian villas, here in Chapter 3 makes the point that the owners ofretreats and country seats who occupied houses in the squares of London'sWest End when they were new and fashionable could enjoy a country-styleview from their urban windows. The landscaping of the London squares wasquite different from the allees and clipped geometries of continental equivalents, and seems to have been calculated to make the residents feel at home inevoking their parklands, It is something that might be expected on the outskirtsof the city, where the town and the country meet. Ebenezer Howard pointedout in 1902 that a 'garden city' would give access to city facilities while preserving the good health of country l i f ~ l l n a settlement like Paliochora there isdoubt about whether it produces a rural or an urban milieu inside its defensivewall. There are elements o f both, but whether the urban elements havereached a threshold of intensity that would make it 'solidify' as urban is opento doubt. It remains pre-urban, perhaps incipiently urban, and might have turnedconclusively urban given a locat ion that favoured more external l inks, or asystem of governance that encouraged prosperous settlers. The Garden City isaltogether different, in that i t is built with knowledge of and probably on theedge of, a thriving city. There were already reasons to take advantage of thisliminal location well before Howard's time, as Philippe Gresset explains withreference to the edge of nineteenth-century Paris in Chapter 6 The strategywould seem to be to maintain a rural milieu as close as possible to the city, soas to be able to connect with the earning power and spending power of theurban population, Where the city has a well-defined edge, as Paris did becausethe passage of goods into the city was controlled and taxed, there is a 'dutyfree' zone just outside, where the citizens go to unwind, and where the architecture seems similarly unbuttoned and picturesque. In Chapter 11 EmmaDummett reflects on Howard's influence on Le Corbusier, and the Garden Citymovement that Howard set in motion also found i ts way to New York first atSunnyside Gardens in Queens, as Bruce Thomas explains in Chapter 8 Manhattan is not far away 20 minutes on the train, but a house with a garden herewi ll cost less than a pokey Manhattan apartment. which has made Queensespecially attractive to young families. In the Garden City we readily recognizea suburban milieu which is not at all the same as Paliochora's pre-urban milieu

To be i n touch with the countryside is to b e in touch with somethingfundamental, and Antonella De Michelis in Chapter 2 finds ruralist gestures inPapal palaces within the ancient walls of Rome. The city was so depopulatedduring the Middle Ages that during the fifteenth century one could take a ruralretreat in the shade of the ruins of great imperial urban structures. The milieu is


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(1 ',IIIIl:lly IIl1d i l l l l l ' ,U,l l ly 110:,tllll ,1I1 11010 II,.} Il l i l l l l lJh 01 11 11111 I>VOI vou thuWO,llost monumonts ot rmmklncl plompts the melancholic retlocllOl1 Ihnt londsmoral character to a scene, I t remained much that way into the nll1eteenthcentury , when the uni fication of I ta ly and the adopt ion of Rome as its capitalbrought property developers who banished the pastures, ruins and vineyards infavour of ugly new streets in imitation of Paris and New York. .S3 The mood ofl iving among ruins would seem to be elegiac, but there are moments when thebathos of everyday life being conducted among the fragments of ancient grandeur seems to take on the air of a surreal is t collage. A grandiloquent monument looks out confident ly and sti ll seems 10 preside over unparalleledmagnificence. unaware of the conversat ion of the washerwomen folding upthe laundry that has been drymg ,n the sun. The same Juxtaposition. but WIththe terms reversed and used In a deliberate rather than an accidental way. IS tobe found at the Cartier Foundahon in the 14tharrondissement of Pans. It IS onthe Boulevard Raspail. a straight street, as urban a s c an be. lined with continuous buIlding. The CartJer FoundatIOn s buildmg is unique in the street in beingdeSigned as f reestanding object set in parkland. There is something complexand sophisticated 90mg on. The of the budding, made of glassand steel,prOjects some way beyond the building. gMng f ramed views of sky that leaveone wondering if the building has been made magically transparent (Figure 1 6The boundary fence at the back edge of the pavement IS a storey-high screenof plate glass. which ()(le takes at f irst glance to be a run of shop displaywindows. which would be characteristic In the area. However. what is ondisplay IS the garden. deSIgned by Lothar Baumgarten, which is a carefully nurtured and heightened fragment of an idea of Arcadian nature, with undulatingland, trees. tussocky grass and, variously according to the season. daiSES,violets, bluebells. cheny blossom. It is. M :e Constable s Cornfield an urbanartWork. It goes by the name Thearrum Boranicum and Its insouciance is carefully maintained {Figure 1. 7}. The building, designed by Jean Nouvel, has sevenstoreys above ground, which seems normal enough in this location, and eightstoreys below ground, which is exceptional. This is an absolutely urban milieu,in which little oasis-gardens flourish in confined spaces {the French word forthem is squares }. The Theatrum Botanicum IS not elegiac but surreal, and,being presented partly veiled by reflective glass. could be taken for a mirage.

There is a sense these examples that, so far as the urbanite isconcerned, the role of the countryside is palliative. Business is done in the city,and it wears one down. One goes to the countryside in order to recuperate, notto escape the city altogether, but to relax the pace before rejoining the attract ions of the ci ty . One always expects to return to the giddy intox icat ions ofhard, relauvely well-paid work and the fashionable throng. which can be soexhausting. Taking these stimulations too seriously makes one into a fashionvictim. Once one has acquired some meaningful experience of the countryside,

n Nouvel.fond.lion Cenier.n d lolher8aumgen....

~ t uBor.nkum. 1994(d.Uil . The endof the buildingdem.terializedh. . . . in doud ofell...,., blossom

,Primroses androcks in L o t h .e'umglln.n. utrumBo .nicum d.l_ilI

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MoralityThiS Prusslan Circle s aspirat ion was to set socIety on a proper fOOtlO9 andarchitecture was part of that prOlect. BUildings are always symptoms of thesociety that produces them, as any archaeologist Will confirm, but on occasionthey can be bui lt i n t he hope tha t t hey WIll act so as to bring into being thesociety of the future, or at least to act as an instrument that can be used to thatend. One might call such a programme utoptan . or, it has been completelysuccessful, It mIght be saId in retrospect that the buildings were ahead of lhelftime . For Winckelmann the perfectton of Greek art had been possible becauseof the perfectIon of Greek society, and because of the unaffected natural gracewith which Ideas found their way to expressIon. For Fnednch Ntetzsche, wrttlngin the 1860s and 1870s, the anCIent Greeks embodied the ideal of the freesptrit. By birth Ntetzsche was Prusslan, but he repudiated his cttizenshlp whenhe moved to Switzerland in h is twenties, and preferred to think of himself asEuropean, or even as Polish.S) In Nietzsche s expression of his ideas, he madeuse of various posit ive and negative stereotypes with which he made sweeping generalizat ions that helped him to get his point across, at the expense ofsome injured sensibilities. His negative stereotypes included religious believers,whom he portrayed as being in the grip of a herd mentality, and Germans,who were designated emblematically as complacent and self-satisf ied - theembodIment of common sense. He saw life as a process of continUIng development. In our youth we acquire the concepts and habits that we wil l use tomake ourselves the adults we become, and we continue in our development,acqUifing new conceptual tools and discarding those that we have outgrown. Ina process of development l ike thiS, one mUSI have the elementary tools Inorder t o forge the more sophIst icated ones. And WIth the development of asociety some such progressIOn must be antiCipated If we accept the commonsense of the day, then everything stays much as It is or continues in the samedirectIon. In order to bnng about change one must do something radical, s0me-thing utoptan, somethtng that steps outSIde of socIety as It IS currentlyordered.Hence the appeal of the countrySide for utopian act ivists. One does not havethe comforts of the sociable crowd, aff trming one s worth, and, as Hazlittfound, it can be dispiriting to do without that; but given a l imited amount ofsupport and a group of like-minded souls, it is possible in the country to establish the nucleus for a new way of life. Such was the ki utz In Chapter 10Marina Epstein-Pllouchtch and Tzafrir Fainholtz explain how Theodor Herzl, thefounder of Zionism, embraced the idea of a co-operative rural community asthe baSIS fOf the generat ion of a new soc iety and a new Jewish identity thatwas deliberalely removed from the Eastern EUlopean Jewish expenence ofthe urban ghetto. Le Corbusier s engagement In thiS rural context is perhapsunexpected, as hiS reputation was established by promoting ideas about lhe22

11 101111/ 11 11,,1 1111l , w lI 1110 ill 11I1I l II 1I1 hilI Iho I P I W I I ~ l 01 lh oklj / llt. would ,1 .IIIV l ,II I/II,Ilocl to I l CoilJUSlef S use at garden City,dods OYOIl HOlD surprlsu19. gIVen his Inclination 10 do away with traditionalCllV centles and suburbs, bu t Chapter 11 demonstrates that the Influence wasIndeed thele The bnks here make It clear Ihal there can be an idealism ,n Ihesuburbs, whICh goes beyond making a pragmat ic f ix . ThaI much IS alreadyevident ro Chapter 8: SunnYSide Gardens had utopian aspirations alongSide acommitment to real practicality. And whi le La Corbusier might have beendeSlgOlng urban blocks In the 1920s. his most important commissIOns weresuburban and rural vil las. There is l tenslOfl between the overheated urbanculture of Ihe avant-garde and the places where one can actually try out unconventional new ideas that might unnefVe the neIghbours. Carmen Popescu saccount of the arrival of Modern Movement Ideas Romama in Chapter 9makes It clear that the countryside can be a place where new ideas can takeroot and flourish, despite urbanites preconceptions,

Witnessing changeThings are in flux. The countryside is in criSIS. Everything is gOtng to have tochange. In fact it is already changillQ around us. If we are old enough then wecan remember that things used to be different, but it is when one piecestogether a longer history that the change becomes dramatic. In the ancientworld Rome was uniquely large, its populatIOn reaching one million about 5 Be,but at that sIze It overstretched even the Romans technologies, and WIth thefoundatlOfl of Constantinople its prestlQe waned. The next city to grow to thatsize was London c.18011 Now there are hundreds of them. Ankara wasadopted as the capttal CIty of modem Turkey In 1923, and it has been growingever since, from about 50,000 to over four mlUIOfl tnhabitants. In Chapter 12 AliCenglzkan and Dtdem Klhckiran present an account of the transformallon ofTemell i, which wasonce a rural settlement but has now been absorbed In theimmense City. There are people who s li ll l ive there who have witnessed thechange, and Cengizkan and Kilickiran s presentation of their view reminds usthat the apparently abstract logic of central-place theory is an Olympian viewof regions that aggregates human action so that the humans look l ike molecules in a flu id that is forming crystals, Cengizkan and Klhckiran go downamong the humans and report on the complex feelings and dilemmas that facethem and determine the properties of the fluid of which they are a tiny part,

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Nostalgie de la boueIt IS clear Ihat the human world gOing to be Increasingly urban in the decado >to come. The inhabltanlS of villages will find thai Ihey have become suburban,and the leafier suburbs will grow more dense. A grown-up will wistfully remember the unconsidered vitality of childhood, and will connect that innocence withthe more-rural place that sustained it, running about on tussocky grass in thedappled light of a now-vanished orchard that produced only less-than-perfectfruit. Or remember the smell of scorched ewe's milk, warmed by a red--hotpoker, being fed to a new-born lamb rescued from the snow, being petted bythe fireside. For many of us, grOWing up IS a process of gradual urbanization,with the rural expenences seeming more vivid and fundamental in part becausethey were experienced at a more Impressionable age, and traditional bucolicscontinue to work effectIVely on urban audiences, as narratives and as Images.SIgnificant numbers of the urban population enjoy viSiting the countryside, andmay even live there despite being employed In the city. Our food is grown Inthe countryside somewhere In the world, even rf we have never seen theplace. Sustaining current levels 01 mobility may be problematic In the decadesahead, but telecommuOIcatlOns WIll ensure the contmuing flows of informatJOO,goods and servICes between the urban and rural realms, regionally and internationally. The different architectural decorums for the city and the country maybe eroded. Many businesses seem to operate from steel-framed sheds Ihalcould indifferently be In a '.elel or on an industrral estate, so long as the land ischeap and there IS a suitable workforce with.n reach. Many a former markettown has a prosperous-looking high Street WIth the same smart shops as Inthe big cities, and teleVISions stream identical aspirations indifferently intourban and rural homes. BUI history shows us that the countryside is a Viableplace for experiment, where we can try new ways of configurrng dally life, soas better to prepare us for the future, by cultivating people 01 good character,immune to the depraVities of the city. The bUildings are left as traces of thoseaims, maybe mute and inglorious In themselves, but once harnessed in anoble cause. And mud, which was once ubiquitous in town and country alike,is now the defining trait of the profound countryside; both actual mud, as itf inds its way IOtO the house, and its symbolic aspect as it acts as the concreteembodiment of a nostalgia for the origins we have left far behind between theTigris and Euphrates: a cultural half,memory of the sun-baked bricks of earlycities, and the human clay,

NotesI W,I II ,, ,, , 11,111 ', II M< W I : , w < ~ I s lxcu,s,on', III Ih e Rou d fable llondon, 18171; see

W,II,,,., I I . / I m ~ C O l ~ l v 1 / J WOfAs.lld'lcd by P P Howe. 21 voIs ILondon. Denl, 19321 vo l 4,p 111

2 Annie Pfoulx. '8fol :eback Mounlllln', ,n The New Yorl:9r, 13 Octobe, 1997, pp. 74fl., nolee, Brokeb:k MotitltllJn (AJbefta Film Emenu nmenl. 2005l

3 RlIVffiO '(l WII ,ms, The Counrr,o IIlCJ rile City Iill/le Modem Nove/(New York.; Oxford UnMllsny Press, 19731; Town (J{l(j COOllfr,o, edled by Anthony Same:t and Roger Sa'uton (londonJonathan Cepe, 19981. Oxtntr,o /.Jfe DIsptJ/ches From Left of It edillld by Ian Jad:(london: GfiIIlla. 20051. The C,ry Reader, edoled by RIChard T LeGales and F,edenc SlOUI{london: Routledge, 19961; The Dry Culrures RNdtN, edi:ed by Maleolm M.les, La,n Bordenand T Han (london. Routledge, 20001, S:ephen GflIham and SKnon Marvlll, SpIInrenngU ~ Nerworked /nfrasrructutes, MobMtes and the Urtwl ConditltXl(london: Rout'edge, 20011; Teny Marsclen and Jonathl MurOOCh. Reronsntutl1lp Rura4rr CounI1)'Slde ., an lJrln Con/ext Restrur;tutrlg Rural Areas (london: Routledge.19941, f'tl,hp lowe, TeffV Marsden and Jon81h11n Murdoch. The Dtfferen1Jated Counrl}'Sde'(london: Routledge, 20031, People W tile Countrys ocle Studies 01 Scc>aI Change III RUflIIBnt... edited by Tonv Chemooon .-.d a...- es Walkins (london: Paul Otaprnan, 19911.

4 Mallhew Trytor, l.rwlg Wofblg CounI1)'Slde The ~ RevIew of RUflII Economy lindAJford8tble Hou:slI lg- (lonoorL Oepaftmenl lOt Commurutl6 and local Govemment 2ClO8lp 123 The liguf8 ' 4.9 pe f cent lOt hotels and lestaufan15, 158 pel' cent lor wholesaleand retail trade, lepaol of 100101 vehicles

5 lewIS MumfOtd. Nhat IS a u y III Ardrttecrllli R;ad 1937; .. The Or r R8WleGales and Stout. op CIt, pp 92-96

6 PausaNM, translated by Peter l ....., Gt.ode 10 Gt8 lK:tl, 2 voI (Ha11'l'1(ll1(lswo Pengwn,197111101-1,104.1

7 Moses r-IIlIey, The Ancottnt Economy12nd rev edIl London; Hogarth. 1985) p. 1248 PhIlip AbriIITI , TOWII and Economoc GrOWltL Some Theones and Problems', in Towns ,Soaerr ESSlfY In ECOf OfflIC HlSfOty lind HJs/oncai Soc/okIgy, ell ted by Phr ip Abrams andEA Wlgev (Cambridge C8mblidge UrwefSlly Pl'ess, 19781 p. 9.

9 And,ew Waflace.HadI.1. 'InlloducliOn', ,n Or r lind Countryside in the Arcent World, ed, ledby John Rd' and Andrew W8lLace-Had..lll.onclon. Routledge, 19911 p. x.

10 T.E. R'hl and A.G Wlson, 'Modelhng end Seltlement SUllClures ... Anclent Greece NtIwApproaches to the Pol s', ,n Rd' and Wallace-Hadnll,op. CIt.. pp. 59-96

FW Maitland, TOWfl h/p and Borough (Cambridge Cambrldge UnM fSl1V P'ess, 1898lp.18

12 RIChard Holl and GlIrvase Ross8l, ' Inlrociucllon: The English T()WI'l in Ihe Midd e Ages, ,nThe Medieval Town A Reader III Engi Il Urban HIStory 1 2 ~ 1 5 4 ed,led by Rocllard Holtand Gervase Rosser Ilondon Longman, \990) p. 3

13 Paul 'Nheal ley, The Plvor 01 the Four Ouarters: A Pre/,m'Mr,o Enq,-,, Y mto the OriginS andCharacterof theAncltlnt Chinese C,ty IEdlnburgh: Ed''''burgh Un ersity Press, 19711 p. 372

14 Follow,ng the eJ


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I I , , , , 1, ,,,,,,,,, '11\ . .01 IIV I ln l .. M I ', or' , II ,. . . . , II ... ~ . , , I r l'01 , ,

II I t ' ~ ~ ' ~ . ' ' ' J . II,, II, ' h l l I Ol y 1 ' , ' ~ I . , d n f s v t l l I N c w y , 1 110.,11' ,1 ,.... I ' . ~ *I' II J:n IlJOtJ f.l 111

22 A.H M Jones. The Larer RtJf1l81l Emptte 204-602 A SocuI. ECOf/OlTIIC and AdmIntstrarrveSunoe\;. 2 vots lOx1ord; Blackwell. 19(4) vol 1. pp 112-166

2 3 There was lIIlso a seedy SlIde 10 Constant nopIe. see Mchael Angold. The ByUl1r .,., Empre/025 /204 A PrJIlru HlSrory (london: Longman, 1984) po 244-245, Great CItoIten prompled an ambivalent atlltude towafds them The dichotomy between Rome andO .heI CltJeS and the '( fysWpB' WI all tudes lowards Rome are oommeoted on bv RayLaurence. Wr>1ItIQ the Roman MelropoU. WI He en M Paron. op CIt. pp 1-20

24 Pau Magdal.no. The mpir of Manuel / KotrVl8flO:S 1143-80 (Cambridge c.mbndge Uno-. . . .s.:y P:ess. 19921 p. 11125 Ttas PlftlCUlal aspect 01 Cooslaonlonople'S role IS the subtect 01 a seoes 01 papers on Consranru lIy 01 Ilhfl()ls Press. 19631 pp 135---136

43 lnee and Ba Iantyne. op ClI. P 7; FredrIC C Lane. Veruce A MarlfllTle RepublIc lBa11 more,MD Johns Hopk.ns lkwer l.ty Press. 19731 pp 61.63

44 lnee and Ballantyne. op CIt. pp 45 b d . pp 34...J546 lbod, pp 37-3847 ibid. PIJ 33-3448 Taylor repoll op. CIt.. p 12 3 MlChel Serres. Rome Ie livre de tondlIlJOfIS lPllrl Edll>Ol lS GfiI;Sset e: Fasquclle. 19831,

translated by Fe lC>ll McCarren. In lhe CIty AgItated Mu'tIOIICltY. m Rome The 8 ck ofFoundlIII(l(IS (P,1o Allo. CA- Stan'ord UrtJYefSlty Press. 1991l: see Ba lanryne. ArctllrectureTheoiy. OP CI1 pp, 169-202

50 Se8,Iso The GeoIollv of Morals . chapler 3 01 Deleuze ,n d Gualllln, op. ot. pp51 Joyce Hen Roboll Ol l. ' H, Honey. I m Home Weary lNeuf8Slhemcl Bus ,essmen and

the ForflllftlOll 01 , Serenely Modern AesthetIC', m Andrew Ballantyne, What lS NeMec-lure? lLondon: Routledge, 2002) pp. 112-128

52 Eberlezer HOWllld, Gl rden GilleS of Tomorrow(londoo Swan SoMenschelrl, 1902153 ChristopherWoodward, In Rums (london: C 'latto eOO WiOOus, 20011 p. 25, quolir\9 Augus-

tuS Hare.54 DaVid flrlCher, Se7en (New Line Cinema, 1995).55 Tobe Hooper, Tlla Texlls C/>amsaw Massacre (Vollex, 1974)56 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, D,scovrs sur tes SCIences er res lIns lo.)On' 1750): Idem o SCOUIS

sur l orlf}lne el los fondemenfs de I m6guiJlJt6 parmi res hommes (Amsterdam 1755); 'Oeuvres cornpI6tes, etJoted by B Gagneb'rl aOO M. Raymond. 4 vols IParls, Galhflllfrd. 1959-1969) vol 3, MtlrcAnlo,ne Laugle'. ESS8I SIN I lIrC/lJleclure IPans: 1753). translated bv Wolfgang aOO AnN HermaM. Essay on ArchItectvre (Los Angeles. CAe Hennessey aOO Ingal:s.1977157 Fnedneh Neusche. Ecce Homo' Wie Man Wi


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Chapter 3

Rural urbanismLondon s West End n rnol

I want 10 t hi nk a bo ut t he sp ace s of the metropolis. specifically how theshaping of urban environments - the landscapes and IOpographles of a City h as a k in d o f e nd ur an ce a nd m ut ab il it y. My locus IS London speClhcalty thearea known as the West End. during the long eighteenth century. Here I look atthe ways in which patterns of landownership and Land development show howthe deciSionS of the past sti ll Inf luence the present. The modernity of thesedevelopments has now become history. We see them as part of the past ratherthan as a strand that runs from the past Into the present. This viewpoint givesurban spaces a volatility of meaning through our separation of t he p as t and t hepresent. In t hi s c ha pt er I w an t t o t ry t o e xp lo re t he c on ti nu it ie s o f spa ce andtime 10 see how notions of modernity in country andcity in the long eighteenthcentury can endure. In t his w ay I ai m to begin to develop our understanding ofthe porous relationship between urban and rural.

My enqu.ry stans with issues surrounding land landownership anduse of landscapes and my Intention IS [0 explore the ways whIch methodsof land management and development and the assoaative values of landscapeusually connected with rural environments were In fact portable betweenc ou nt ry a nd Ci ty a nd formed essential components in the rEHmaging of themetropolis. The eighteenth-eentury country house provides a starting point asthis was an essential vehicle through which a patrician culture expressed indiVidual and national identity through the complex interactions of architecture andlandscape. The aesthetiC vocabularies of antiquity and arcadia were appropriat ed and a new syntax formulated to create an effective national visual language with encoded meanings for the educated classes. This is manifest bothin lhe style of country-house architecture which drew heaVily on ancientR om an an d Pa ll adi an m od el s a nd in t he deS ig n a nd l ay ou t of landscapegardens where referel lCes to antique buildings and literature were frequentlymade The practice of country4 Jouse viSitlng meant the viewing public experi-

1JNrt Rocquem p of London sWK1End c: 113OpriYltl QOIlection

1111 01,1 111 ,11 ult lll 1 pi 1111011 1 11.1 II tUSl IMlid A n d l ho se OilCUUlll0rs wererll..tllu moro VIVid through lhe Illcreased InteleSlln and knowledge of the arch...tschlle and lileralure 01 antIQuity al thiS time

Yet dumlQ the long 8Ighteenth century society became lOCreaSlnglyurban and the ulllforrmty and domeslJC scale of town planning might have stifledthe use of thIS aesthetIC language. Instead however we flfld that thIS dfstll lCt setof Intellectual systems and conventions IS brought into the metropolis and usedboth In the funheral lCe of the SOCIal and cultural hegemony of the ruling elite andconversely In the creation of a modern metropolitan Infrastructure which represented new sets of SOCial and political values. Here London s landscapes as manIfest In the laying out of a garden square or a royal park, could be read by aviewing public whose senses were already trained to understand the meanrngs ofself-consciously constructed rural spaces which explored the resonance betweennature and antiquity. This senSibility to landscape moved between country andcity and London became an evocative arena for the public display of taste wealthand status social intercourse and the economIC systemsof urban Ide.

House bu il di ng and es tat e d ev el op me nt w er e a c or e part ofarchitectural production In England If not the Bntlsh Isles over thIS penod.Together they encapsulated the social econormc and lXlIitlcal system where


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I,II11lllWIIIJI ,IlIp W , j , , II I 0 , , 1 111.11 p,IIt ut 111 1 dolulIllUIl 01 , k 1,,1,1.1 , , II lu 1111,IQClacy owned land III the country as well as In London - these IMI(,olsof whanland were known collect,vely as the great estates . The nomenclature of theseareas of London, for instance the Bedford, Cavendish and Grosvenor Estates,supplies a lexicon of the names of the landowning families whose estates wereconcentrated the West End (Figure 3.1). Burlington House is a typicalexample of an urban country house or palace. The original seventeenthcentury house was bUilt on PICCadilly and surrounded by the open fields of theyet undeveloped West End of London (Figure 3.2). In the opening decades ofthe eighteenth century the house, Its landscaped gardens and Immediate environs, underwent substanual development. The house was transformed Into amodern, classically deSigned metropolitan dwelling by Lady Juliana Burlingtonand her son Richard, third Earl of u r l i n g t o n ~ The land o w ne d b y the Burlingtonfamily to the north of the house, kllOwn as the tenacres , became a networkof reSldentLClI streets that yl6lded conSiderable income from leases and rents(Figure 3.31

The drive to realize the full econormc ~ t n t i l of lhe land was mirrored throughout the eighteenth century in the country estates of the elite.3Country houses, eIther through extensive rellOvalJon or new build, becameshowpl9Ces of taste, wealth and power. The productIVrty, prof itabili ty and

32J. K t PP -..d J,Knyff, 8w1i 91:onHouse, PiccadillyNouvelTh rde Ie Gtende8ret_9n., 1698privele ~ o m o n

3J N nR oc q....,mep of london sW I End1731-1746,

deteil showingeteeeroundlurtington House.prlvele ~ o l l e e t i o n

acreage of the working land was a status symbol in i ts eH and generated thewealth required adequately to effect the necessary aesthellc of house and landscapes garden. There is no doubt that the new farming techniques employedon large estates such as Woburn in the laller part of the eighteenth centurywere admired for their ingenuity. eff icacy and yield. Moreover, picturesquesystems of viewing landscape, including an appreciation of the romanticsublime, were based on working landscapes such as those at Richard PayneKnight s Downton and Uvedale Price s Foxley. Alongside this, the creation ofcountry-house landscapes with distinct ideological and political meaningshelped create and augment the status of the ruling elite. But for this formula towork, the viewing publichad to want to engage with this aesthet ic To this endpicturesque systems of viewing disseminated througn touristic literature, andthe desirability of adequate education and ergo class to appreciate referencesto antique architecture were powerful forces in the shaping of an appreciat,on


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ul Illu COlilitly Ilouse ,111 1 'Istalu II,U:,U ,llllludllS low, III I', II I,ll I 1 111I1,mof 111e elite helped engender the IllUSion 01 inclUSion Into an excluslUlldlY :,\.t:lutythat bound together different classes through a feeling of unity. But we tend toforget that these houses and their estates were seen as modern by contemporaries. For instance Jane Austen, a vivid commentator through her novels onsocial life in early nineteenth-century England, describes Mansfield Park (ahouse from the novel of the same name) as a spacious modern-built house' aphrase she uses again to describe Cleveland - the grand country house inSense and Sensibi ity 5 But for Austen modern meant Georgian, yet we seeGeorgian as an historical style that relates to the past. Perhaps, then, we needto rethink our view of notions of modern and modernity specifically here in rela-tion to past and present urban environments.

The great estatesMapped against this rapid expansion in new country-house building is the emergence of London a s a n increasingly important metropolitan centre and core partof the evolving notion of nationalism and national consciousness. And there is astrong relationship between country-house building and the urban developmentof London and its West End in particular. At the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, country-house building ran far ahead of the development of London,but as this peaked towards the end of the century the paceof growth in Londoncaught u p and overtook it. Yet there were similar players involved: the landedclasses, who had consolidated their power through landownership during theeighteenth century, now made their imprint on the capital (Figure 3.1).6 The'great estates', owned by the landed elite, became the subject of the sameintensive development as their country-house landscapes. Just as antiquity wasvital for the aesthetics of country houses and landscape theory, so it became adriving force in the shaping of the modern metropolis and the visual expressionof the importance of London as a centre for national government. This patternof landownership and the decisions made about how to develop the greatestates at this time formed the topography of modern London that endures tothe present day. The market gardens and small farms situated on the urban landbelonging to the elite gave way to garden squares and rows of terrace housesthat gave the West End its enduring low-rise, domestic character. Here I amthinking about the metropolis as a site of economic activity through speculativedevelopment in order to explore the continuities between past and present, howthese help formulate both an urban and a national identity, and not least howurban and rural interacted in the construction of these.

Rather like a country house and its landscape the city can, then, beseen as a signifier of the complex social-cultural and political forces that had

dl,II III, 11111 ,I', ,III


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1 111 liul d l l l d l l U I l I III I ,,,, III,iI lI,u I IOl l l l y IIlV II, iI t II ,,,It I 1i 1IU


20/41

general public w o could enjoy its open spaces as they would the landscape ofa country estate Just as Regent Street gave definit ion to the eastern andnorthern edge of the West nd the Royal Parks delineated its border to thewest Once again w find the coofluence of urban and rural at play

.5Plan 01 R a g e n tPark and RegenlS l re et a s laid outc.1812-1830

John Nash planlor the Regent sa rk c:.1809 1812.pnval. coliKtion

1John Nash mapof Rat .. .t s Pa.kproject c 1826.p .tn t. colIec:Iion


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The Royal ParksThe relationship between urban and rural landscapes comes ful l cncle In lhoimprovements carried out In t he Roy al P ark s in west London in the openingyears of the nineteenth century: Hyde, 51 James s and Green Parks were animportant part of the project to re-lmage London. These were nOt new parks,but the spread o f t he city westwards. and Increasing awareness o f I he socialand p ol it ic al i mp or ta nc e o f l an dsca pe . r ai se d n e w d es ig n q ue st io ns andaddressed significant ideological Issues concernmg Ihese urban spaces. Theshapu lg and codifyIng of I he L on do n l an ds ca pe had b eg un a lm os t u nc on sciously WIth the formation of garden squares as part of the eighteenth- Iloyoll I I I ~ .01 PIULU IJI \111 111 plalliling Of II j lr iOrl sqll1110.coliid Ilu IU(lCI by /I VIUWIII(j p ll bh c w ho se s en se s w er e a lf ead y t ra in ed t oundersland the mC


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hHlI0111', III 1110 1IIIl.lII hlj1es:er Mitoc:hester U'- ItyPress, 2006)

2 I OlSCUSS the won: 00 S1,Ill,ngtoo House In my chapter It 's WonderfulLJfe', on B8bv d byEvery Muse RdId Bce /l694-1753J JEarl of 8urlJngron. 4m Earl of Ctxk edi:ed bv0MlI Arnold london G e o f ~ , Gfouo, 19941

3 Thos IS discussed II' my book The GeorQIan CQunrry House' ArdwlecrVf6, IIIIdSoaery(Stroud, Ala' Sunon, 1998l4 Or his poont see ArIdIew BaIJitMyre. RIChd P6yne I::noghl. Archttecture. IIIId

Ubeny (Camb dge Carnl::onOge l.InrYefSity Press, 199n; Stephen Danoels, Hump/Ify ReprOl'l,t.ndscape GlIrcifNwlg IIIId rile G1tppIty of Georgwl Engl >d (New Haven: Ville UnoversrtyPress, 19991: The Iconograpiry of Uor1c.f5:ape SS yS 0I'l he S)fl'lbo'ic RepresetltatJort.DesIgn IIIId Use of EnVfl OlYl l8flts. edited bv Oems Cosgn:we (lr'l( Stephen DaroeIs(Cambndge Cambndge U S I t y Press, 19891

5 ja M Aus:en. ~ f l l d Ptttk (london 18141 ChapUlf 5: Sense and Senslbiliry (london181l Chaprer 426 HA. H a b a ~ ~ u ~ , MgIish RUSllC TradillOfl

7 4 o - 1 8 6 0 ( S 8 f ~ e l e y U m V ( l r ~ t y or Callforrua Press, 1987),8 On th,s POint. see Tom Willl lmsor'l, Pohte I.8ndscapes: Gardens MId Soc1ery in Ef6fffltf>.Century Ef'I{)/6nd tStroud AliI , Sunon, 1995)

9 Dallil Arnold, liv O off the Land,l ,oovatlOflS In FarmingPraclloos and Farm Des,,,,,,', I' TheGeotglan Count )' House pp, I 52-166,10 MIChael Port, 'Tow , House and Country House; Their InteracflOl'l', In The Georgian Country

House,PtJ 117-13811 Repon f,om rhe Sefect Commmee on PublIC W.lks (Lontlo ,: 1833),12 John Felth


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Chapter 7

Such a magnificentfarmstead in myopinion asks for amuddy poolRural buildings and thesearch for a 'regional'architecture in BelgiumLeen Meganck and Linda n Santvoort

The concept of regionalismAlthough the later - modernlsl - historiography minimized regionalism'S roleand presence in architectural debate and production, it was an important themein late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century architecture. ' The roots o f theregionalist concept go back to the Jast decades of the nineteenth century.l Themany changes in society due to industrialrzation formed the soil in whichregionalism germinated as a cultural strategy to counter alienation. As a movement, regionalism manifested itself in literature as well as art and architecture.It can be dissociated neither f rom the Arts and Crafts movement, whichstressed craftsmanship versus the uniformity and loss of quality in industrialproduction, nor from the heritage movement, which reacted against the fastdisappearance of traditional landscapes and the familiar environment. Theessential feature of regionalism is the focus on regional and local characteristics, which in architecture translated as the use of local building matenals andn

,,1,,1,11,.,1 1I . I'II'H.lll1,,1 v II. IIJlII ly UVUI tl,U CUIII\I l IU: Il u IWIll l ,dU ImUl1 5Y5hJIII.lliL:itlly lull Olll 011hu lIcllllocluHlI, I::;CQlll$O,' bUllrl the last d ec ad es o f t he1I111OteOllih Cenlll1y, tho study of vernacular ardllleClure and more specifically01 Iural architecture seemed to offer new possibililles in escaping from the'empty formulae' of revivalist styles. The local 'architecture without architects'was rediscovered and invested with almost platonic qualities of sobriety. rationality and Rusklnlan Iruth and 'honesty':

In ou r reg ion the naive beauty of a rura l house consists of s inceri ty and ofharmony With the surrounding nalUle. I I has such an intimate ond WIththe soil, th t It seems to have grown from it together with the vege &tlon .... There seems to be an Innate goodness, a mystenous aestheticsentiment present In the people, as long as I t stays loyal to its ancestraltraditions, based on acQUired knowledge, tOClt conventions and some sortof artIstic instinct.

There IS a striking emphasIs on authentlCltv and the deliberate and spontaneous union of form and fUr ICtlOl l In thIS Interest In rural architecture. llleenMontljn traces thls concern to the fact that 'the farm was an ideal model of thelink between moralitY and architecture' and that 'ItS beautY was not the resultof an artistIC architect but of a healthy spmt'.5 The crucial question that CQ ltinu-ally arose here, whether or not It was art iculated, was whether modern manhad been distorted by a matenallstlC SOCletv and was thus no longer able toachieve the 'Innocence' of hIS forefathers, with its attendant simplicitv andharmony. The many studies conSidered necessary 10 explain precisely what afarm was, would seem to confIrm that wh t for centuries had been guaranteedby traditIon was now no longer self-eVIdent.

The flig ht from the cit iesNineteenth-century painting offers tangible evidence of the transformationundergone by town and country alike under the influence of industrialization.Some artists were highly sensitive to this metamorphosis and its influence onpeople; this is, for example, a constantly recurring theme in the work o f theadherents of plein airisme and natura lsme The return to nature was one of theaspirations that breathed fresh Irle into nineteenth-century art. The celebratedBarbizon France) is just one of the many places to which artists went in searchof 'unspoilt' nature. while at the same time fleeing the artistic-urban milieu thatwas increasingly felt to be 'unnatural'. PJein airisme not only inspired artists torepresent landscapes, it also meant a confrontation with life in the countrysideand the traditions that still thrived there. Some artists became real chroniqueurs

'


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of counlry 1110 RwtllllldlllOct\IIH W,I:; otlon lopiosonlo( wilio ,I 1 1111 11 11 fl :11111 ItS picturesque characteristiCS and an almost RusklnrWl onopl'''',I', Ilfll181ence, thus incorporating Ihe message of the loss of rural hie ane Its wehllncture into this art.

The rise of regionalism in the last decade of the nineteenth centurycoincided with the development of cities' peripheries, with the construction ofresidential neighbourhoods and with the urbanization of coastal areas. Artistswould playa significant role in this development. In their quesl for unspoiltnature, they were the first already early in the nineteenth centurylto discoverthe coastal areas and to promote them in their art,6 In their wake, tourismslowly but surely began to take off. The leisure-architecture, as developed inthe last quarter of the ninetenth century, had particular characteristics whichcorresponded to its specific objectives. Turrets, bow windows, balconies,loggias and 'panoramic' windows guaranteed the necessary supply of fresh airand provided highly prized views. The organization of the interior was characterized by a 'picturesque' atmosphere, although this was by no means the mainconcern, as so often claimed. The interaction between the interior and exterioralso formed the basis of a flexible use: the inhabitants could experience thehouse in different ways depending on the posit ion of the sun orthe wind direction. This architecture made a virtue of the climatic characteristics of a location,an important consideration in the architecture of the day as emphasized byViollet-Ie-Duc in abitations modernes 1875 . At the same time, Viollet-Ie-Ducexpressed his reservations concerning the very beaut iful but hardlymaintenance-friendly finishing touches on such dwellings. He said of a typicalcoastal vitia in Deauville France) that: ' I t is one of those typical coastal villasthat has to be preserved under glass for the winter if you want to be sure it willstill be there in July'7

nterest in the history of rural housing cultureand architectureThe growing interest in the countryside was clearly reflected in a number ofpublications by Armand Heins,S a key figure in Flemish regionalism. This artistclassicist published dozens of works that focused attention on regional architecture, both in an urban and a rural context. The prominent representation of(often endangered) picturesque towns and villages would at first seem to havehad a purely art istic aim, but it appears also to have been part of a larger aca-demic endeavour. Heins was clear about his objectives: his drawings resume'the systematic studies of the country home and its regional or local charac-teristic features in our regions'.9 He also went a step further: in a series of'concepts', he introduced a tYPOlogy of the contemporary farm (Figure 7.1). In

7.1A,mand Heinl,prototype ol a,ur i houle of thefllmllh t y ~lyplcllllo, th l ilion southent01 Ghent, inArmend Heins, Isons rurales.. pt r ~ i r l o n n lIamand receuildnplllnchesIGhent: A. Heinl,1915 plate

F

his book Landelijke woningen naar traditioneel Vlaamsch typ ('Rural dwellingsfrom the traditional Flemish style', 1916l, Heins sets his drawings of ruraldwellings against a series of photographs from Stijn Streuvels' e landschewaning n Vlaanderen ('The rural dwelling in Flanders', 1913, Figure 7,2). inwhich Streuvels had sketched the ideological background to regionalism. In thisode to rural life and rural dwellings, we can also recognize the basic principlesof an honest architecture built on tradition, a vernacular architecture based onan aesthetic of simplicity and efficiency, the result of practices handed downover many centurres:

The simple country house. like the great farmsteads, stands on its own, isa unity, forms the embodiment of l ife outside the city and meets theneeds of the country family that lives, works. and toils happily and safelyin it. There is nothing useless, nothing superfluous, in the height or thebreadth of it, but all necessities have been provided for in the simplestmanner possible However, on closer examination, no single house isidentical with another, for each house is built according to the particularinsights of the inhabitant. according to the needs of the family and the circumstances of the location and the l ie of the land The countryman whobuilds his house has something of the medieval builder's talents. In allthings he uses his judgement and common sense and he str ives toachieve the greatest possible result with the least possible means, Hecares not for grandeur and splendour For his building materials, he useselements from his immediate surroundings He remains faithful to onebasic rule: build from the inside out. not from the outside in As long asthe country builder follows his natural disposition and his simple intuition,

113


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F l 0 ,

d .p , ; d. L. dooh. Wcn;n (,d. Sty 8 . . . . . ...

7 2Photograph ofa rural building as published in Stijn Streuvels. The Rural Dwelling in FllInders 9 3 andreused in Armand Heins RuralDwellings from The Tradirional Flemish Style 11916 plate 23

as long as he trusts his infallible genius, the house will be good, sound andbeautiful. I t was only w it h the coming of opu lence and pride tha t menthought to bui ld a tower of Babel, and with arrogance ugliness was introduced into architecture, since the superfluous and the art if ic ial mars thedwell ings of men; for this reason, too, the c ity-dwel ler has lost his goodsense in building O

Th e ethics of simplicity in architecture and th eexample of arts and craftsStijn Streuvels appeal may be seen as part of a significant, international discourse that had begun as early as the third quarter of the nineteenth century.Motivated by his rat ionalism. Viollet-Ie-Duc drew attention to regionalism,calling for building in the best possible manner, in accordance with local cli-matic conditions. These same principles are also clearly present in h ruPrinciples of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1846) by AW N Pugin. andf orm the point o f depar tu re of the A rt s and Cralts movement in England, Inactual architectural practice. these principles were applied in the work of architects such as M.H. Baillie-Scott and C,F.A. Voysey, whose work greatly influenced archi tectu re on the continent by way of the magazine h Studio(1893-19641.

A similar documentation of the English regional rural building typeswas undertaken for example by W, Galsworthy Davie and E Guy Dawber inOld Cottages in Kent and Sussex, Illustrated in One Hundred Plates \19001

(1I,III l. IlullllO fIl l liIISII CUllllrl emIt/flus (190/) iIIld Sidney H JOlles InI IldlJ,ruuons villngOOlsos Oil Allglererre (1912). Tllese studies parallel HeinSaspllatlons to document the tllreatened herllage of rural building traditions. andattribute the same transcendent values to these buildings

Many unpretentious examples of quiet and homely taste are to be foundin all parts of the country, erected by native craftsmen of a sturdy and vigorous peasantI) . These buildings are fraught with an appeal to t he mindand have a significance deeper than is conveyed by mere terms of stone,of brick, of t imber. They stand for much that is peculiarly and characteristically English. They are records of l ives well spent: they tell of contentedpossession, of love of home, and country. and memory With them areassociated those ideas of order. of security and comfort. that result fromthe observance of long-established custom and usage: they bear witnessto w l l ~ s t t l beliefs transmitted from father to son.

The cottage: a universal regionalism?In the spi ri t of the Arts and Crafts movement. cottages were built with specialattention to the client s specific requirements and careful consideration of thelocation. The architecture and the interior expressed the great concern for finishing in the spirit of gesamtkunst

In 1904, Maurice B Adams published a richly i llustrated album,Modern Cottage Architecture which presented mainly the authors own architectural projects, but also cottages by such contemporaries as Voysey 14 Theintroduct ion provides a clear explanation of what a cottage actually is. Theauthor approached the tYpology from a strongly social perspective. describingthe cottage as an economically attainable model. At the same time, Adamshoped to preserve the aesthetic element and show that the cl iche of cheapand nasty did not apply to the cottage:

The main essential is the charm of artistic fitness by which alone a buildingcan be harmonized with its site and surroundings, making it as i t were partof the ground on which it stands. restful and unobtrusive, comfortable andsuitable Picturesqueness comes from simplicity of form and good proportion, producing pleasant groupings. giving graceful skylines and castingtelling shadows. so essential for contrast and colour. 5

Adams recommended the use of local materials, as the cottage was meant tobe in harmony with the countrif ied spirit of the neighbourhood The samesocial emphasis was also adopted by Le Cottage. a co-operative established in


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Blw;sels III 1903, wtllch publlshuu fllllOlithly l l lag,1I111U 1IlidUI till ,111110 1I1l111l)Many cottages, however, had lillie 0 do With this soclo-ldoolQ :III:IIII>1 JUllHlllflCottages were becoming the favouri te bui lding-type of the a1tl\ lont Ilucldlsclass, who found in them the ideal expression of their bourgeois ideals. Thecottage opened up the possibi li ty of combining a predilection for 'architecturebased on tradition' with a desire for modern comfort.,e The result was cottagesthat showed off the ir wealth and tended to dominate the surrounding landscape. This sort of cottage even earned itself a name: 'La vil la ostentatoire'(Figure 7.3), '1 Because of i ts eccentr ici ty i t was, needless to say, hardly anexpression of the above definition of the cottage. The mushrooming success ofcottages throughout the countryside met with a mixed reception. The adoption

fllf6um e f 3rtaison 8Itoderne

Villas Pimponnette at Las C\ochatons , I. Duinbergen slmarM F . IIEMElSOU. _ 10

.

.A typicalexample01 th eostentatiouslIilla : FransHemelsoetarchitect, Villale s Clochetons( the Turretsbuilt at theFlemish coastIDuinbe,genl in1907, in ltwmdll la aisonodflrnf l(1908-191011101. 2, plate 80

.-Jozel Vin,inarchitect, theThrush s Nesl ,built for thewriter Stijn8treullflis in1903-1904 liS IImanifesto of IheflemiSh house, inBullerin Metiersd ArfS1190711101. 7n o. 2, p . 62

01 1 I 1 l l l I l I l C I J ~ 110111 IIIUI,III1I 01 NQllllIlIIcJy - dlsleg


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1 dsdi/tl l, o MOIIWO Girls, 1 , ;1 1:; l /) /JOWI JIIII I II I , (,I jlllwhether Streuvels ever vlsltod the Dutch writers and mllsts LohllllO :, t il otHilversum, In the last decade of the nineteenth and the beglllnll1g of lIIe twentieth century, the area of Bussum, Laren and Blaricum became an experimentalzone for social utopias that also found expression in their own building style ,with clear aff init ies to both the Arts and Crafts philosophy and the vernaculararchitecture of the Land van Gooi area. The houses that were built there byartists, writers and intellectuals had a number of characteristics in common:simple main forms, plain materials and thatched roofs.n

Streuvels and his architect Vierin met at the Kortrijk Artists Guild an artists group that, inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement, aimedto unite all branches of art in a total concept. An additional concern and emphasis was the desire to maintain a link to the artists own Flemish tradition. StijnStreuvels Thrush s Nest may be seen as a manifesto for this movementThere has never been a house which so completely encapsulated the essenceof the Flemish house For Streuvels, author of De landsche w ning in Vlaan-deren, the realization of this house was the result of a fundamental, deliberateand much-considered choice. In the years preceding the building of the house,Streuvels studied the rural architecture of the area, which he knew well, as h isparents house was at Avelgem, only a few kilometres from Ingooigem, Heassembled a collection of photographs of houses and farmsteads in the area. 23Representing much more than the concern for an architectural style (or theabsence thereof), this was a statement about a way of life that continued theline of his native Flemish tradition. Streuvels was even prepared to set asidethe by then already standard modern comforts: there was, for example, anoutdoor lavatory. Vierin assiduously met his client s demands:4 the basic formof the dwell ing was square, under a tent roof . The important rooms werearticulated: the living room, which originally served as the writer s study, waspivotal in the concept. The baker s oven (next to the ki tchen) and thevourekamer (upstairs room). followed a more traditional type of plan. All thewindows were shuttered and painted green and white, according to customand the descriptions set down by Streuvels. An open loggia (veranda) offeredthe indispensable contact with nature, The walls - of locally produced brick were whitewashed, the plinth painted with black tar. Buttresses accentuatedthe corners.

The Flemish beguin ges and the search fo rsimplifi tionClosely related to the Kortrijk Artists Guild, an interest in a home-grown tradition of craftsmanship also developed in Antwerp. The artistic circle Streven

l IIIIVllltO Wei tOllll,Jud dlUll l1d lunb Will i t ile oblecllvo to 1I11tl


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FollowlIlg tllo provlou:, world I,HlS III BolglIlIll l i lIu, .II \ 101Old Antwerp (1894), Brussels,KermlS (1897 and 19101 and Old IIUI)O l ) ) J1.the Ghent World s Fair included an exhibit entitled Old Flanders , Old FlalldOls,with its six hectares and separate entrance, was an exhibition within the exhlbltion.2I The design was by architect Valentiin Vaerwyck, assisted by ArmandHeins. The fac;ades, made in plaster on a timber structure, offered a kaleidoSCOPiC image of the architectural, typological and stylistic richness of Flandersbuilding heritage, grouped by region and presented as an organically evolvedurban neighbourhood. The Old Flanders exhibit was a true regionalist environmen t : the use o f dioramas, l1ags, costumes all designed by Heins) andparades, as well as mUSical and theatrical periormances, made a VISit to OldFlanders a total expenence .21 From the folklore perspective, a parallel c an b emade with the successful InitIation In that period of many folklore museums,which made much of situatIng human actMty In a proper historical settlOg.JCIThose receptIVe to the regIonalist programme took a posit ive view of thiSexhibIt, recognIZing In I t evidence of the COlllJOuity of their own traditioo. TheregIonalists felt strengthened In their COllvictlOn through the cOllsiderabie publICInterest. For opponents, Old Flanders was little more than fairground decorand popularamusement.

Documenting th e vernacular during th e FirstWorld Wa r (1914-1918)The necessity of documentlOg local and vernacular architecture was mademOle clearly apparent by ItS WIdespread destruetioo in the First World War.Publications varied from romantic sketches to precise technical draWIngs,photos of damaged bUIldings and well-


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Imitation farmsteads

I can see our king, with clogs, in a blue cotton overall, a velvet cap on hishead and a clay pipe in his mouth, spading the garden with a crooked back.And the queen in similar clothing gathering eggs in the henhouse Such amagnificent farmstead in my opinion asks for a muddy pool with geeseand pigs, and we shouldn t forget the dunghill.39

Eysselinck denounced the deceit of the architectural concept: clearly the housewas not meant for farming, so the use of an architectural language that mightbe apt for a farmstead was, in this case, absolutely inappropriate. And as forthe local s ty le , adapted to the landscape of Le Zoute, Huib Hoste, anotherimportant modernist, asked himself which villa style could be considered aslocal in this small f ishing vil lage that in the late nineteenth century evolvedinto a mundane holiday resort:

In this seaside resort there is a series of pathways, with a French name,and for each pathway another style is compulsory in order to harmonizewith one and the same landscape: here you have the sentier flamand[Flemish pathway] where one is obliged to build in farmstead style, thereyou have the sen tier anglais [English pathway[ where the cottage-style iscompulsory . . . All these very different styles are considered to be 'local'


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i i c ~ ~

~ rt

,

1,,,.1110; llO>lI',lJll hl (1, V(q ' , M,lIl y I(;illl(It:C .; :;WIIt: lUd v d ~ l l y IJUlwOen clOSI JllIllg1I10l1u(n vllla5 III 111 uli);an C O l l l e ~ alld more reglonalist-msp(red Villas In a rural

c o n l e ~ by altering some of the external features of the house. such as roofscovered with blue glazed tiles versus thatched roofs. So both the moderrllstand the regionalist appearance of a bUilding could well be a 'deSigner dress'draped over archttectural programmes that did not differ that much from oneanotheLU The flexibility with which architects used both the modernist andregionalist vocabulary shows theif thorough mastery of these architectural Ian-guages as well as their senSItIVity and willingness to adapt to the g mus loThe architect AntOine Pompe compares thiS flexibility of style with 'modern'clothing habits: one needs different styles In architecture just as the modernman needs different sets of clothes for different occasions: a three-plece SUItsportswearor travelling clothes.

RegIOnalists at tlmes alsodeSigned very sober houses. Probably thebest marnage of regIOnalism and modernrty IS to be found In 19205 projects foraffordable houSing. The main model was the garden City, and archllects andurban planners also Imported the concept of regionalism that had InfluencedEnglish cottage architecture. In addltlOO the archItecture of the egulfl ges andfarmsteads became an Important source. But theIr language was combmedwith a search for standardizatIOn and cheap building techniques. ThiS led tosome interesting ensembles in whICh local tradItIon and progressIVe elementswere intertWIned Intoa very dIstInctIVe style (Figure 7.7).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ; . , ; ~ . : , ~ , ~ ~ , ~ ~ . ~ A ~ = < i l

uignbyAnto;ne Pompelor thagardencity Kapelleveldnear Brussels09221. Thehouses show adistinct milrturebetween regionaland modernleatures, inRythmeU96S1no.41,p.14

,Patt.,n book:SmallFarmhouHungalo an d

C o t t a ~ 'FMmish5tyl, , publishlKlby the 8- glenf irm Selmaininth late 930.

n l FACES _ I'IMI _._DE _.... p i ..MrS. - :P SAL.A

21 PElSPECTM l _

nlllllETTIS .IIIGAI.OWI 1 YIII.AS .ISTIQ_II GOU' au JOllA ,.1.IUlUl La aOlT i l .

SMAll FARMHOUSES,BUNGALOWS AND COTTAGESFLEMISH STYLE_..-. - __.-foCADCIrrl'U..'


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ASldo Irom D low o ~ i l l n p l o s 01 1t'\()lIldtIOildl :,ryl . III l:luljjllllilone tmds a wide range of progressive architecture that shows lJdldlll.:U< 1I1tor-pretation modernist premises. which resulted in a formal contu)ulty with tradition. Most Belgian modernists clung to brick. as a building material that In therainy climate h proven merits: Henry van de Velde. Gaston Srunfaut, PaulSmekens, Gaston Eysselinck.. leon Stynen. etc. Inclined roofs are to be foundon many modern bUIldings - again as a practical solutIon for the local dimate.When looking at the Belgian modernist architecture of the inter-war period. aremark of Antoine Pompa comes to mind. According to him, regIonal differences eventually would occur In the International Style since ItS functional programme could not negate cbmatologlc Influences that differed regionally.Inevitably thIS would lead to a modern regIonalist architecture' that wouldincorporate what he cal led ' Ie parfum du terroir' ( the perfume of the r e g i o n ~

The race question and German inf luences inregionalism

11 ,,. 10 tilll I I Wlll(; l 1m:, lu 1m IIlddo 10 jJIOSClV{) ' tho tradilions andIoJ..ow.ol Oll tub and n;lllltc In 1929 lhe nOlonous book Kunst und RassebV Paul Schullze-Naumburg received a poSitive cflllqueY In this book. SchullzeNaumburg puts the blame for 'degenerate' modern art on the racial impUrity ofthe Untermenschen. The Buildmg Guide quoted him: 'Ueberlatszt man ihmt= den untermensch die Aufgabe, die kunlt,ge Welt aufzubauen, so wird Irhaussehen dem seiner Bilder glelchen' til we leave the task 10 build the futureworld to the Unrermensch It wi ll resemble his [artistic imagesl. In the sameyear, The Bus/ding Guide applauded the creatiOft of Heimat-musea In Germanyand again promoted the concept 01 'Helmal', as described in Wilhelm Peszler'sDos eimatmuseum eutschen Sprachgeblot als Spiegeldeufscher Kultur:

The author correctly argues that 'Helmat is the soi l, out of which we growand In which our departed rest, Helmat is the air that we and our childrenbreathe; Helmal IS the house In which we were born . i t is the community of people In which we work. Helmal is the h istory of our forefathersWith the ir work and theIr struggles, but Helmat is a lso the future of ourVolk [peoplel. to whICh we belongand which we are bound to serve.S2

Projel prime.A r c h i t e c t e ~ : V ROUSSEAU et d e lESTRE

v i ~ : Vivre (wp;nl.Vile d'en mble.

At tImes there was only a thin l ine between the regIOnalist search for Iocalldentily and the glorrflcatlOO of traditions. based around a framework. of raclCll the0-r ies. The first raclCIl theories can be traced back to eighteenth


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toullsm. In alchneClu O tills IOCDI colow was to Ilu fOIJJI JJI rOljrOJlill 1Inrlregionalist architecture,

In general the architecture of the late 1930s is characterized by anew traditionalism, be it in a 'modern classical' style for more official buildings(offices, government buildings) or in a traditional style (which does not necessarily imply a regionalist concept) for domestic architecture. The climate of eco-nomic malaise and political instability provoked reactionary reflexes in the socialsphere. In t imes of doubt and anxiety, one longs for a sense of securi ty. of'belonging', which the familiar vocabulary of traditional styles was well placedto provide. 5e This harking back to the past and its 'safe' traditions is clearlypresent in the architecture and interior design of the late 1930s. as i t was in thearts and applied arts of that period.5' It is also be found in Germany, as wella s in Italy and France. 5e

Regionalism and the lemish struggle foremancipationAllover Europe the rural building became par excellence the type where thetrue 'spir it of the people' Volksgeisd was to be found. As mentioned before,starting in the nineteenth century. the study of farmsteads and regional architecture in Belgium had become a thriving field of research, in both Wallonia andFlanders. Regionalism in the 1930s was promoted as a new approach to scientific research in the broad cultural field.59 Human geography. topology, anthropology. dialectology, folklore, regional history and art history - the support of allthese sciences was summoned to refine the 'great historical narratives' Grandhistoire that had been written in the nineteenth century. It was in Wallonia inAth) that in 1937 the First International Conference on Regionalism was organized, with a limited number of participants from the Netherlands, Switzerlandand Canada, but more from France, including Jean Charles-Brun. chairman ofthe French Regionalist Federation. tlO Out 01 the study of local architecturalcharacteristics came the search lor a 'modern regionalist architecture', exam-ples of which can be found jUst as much in the Walloon as in the Flemish partof the country.

So regionalism as a general concept and as an architectural trend inthe inter-war years was by no means exclusive the Flemish-speaking part ofBelgium, But in Flanders. regionalism became associated with the increasingstruggle for recognit ion of the Flemish language and culture. And underGerman occupation during the Second World War. the Flemish search for political, cultural and social emancipation through various measures in the cultural,educational and linguistic fields was misused in order to encourage collaboration. This resulted in a very negative perception of regionalism both as a

10[l lIng researcher on lural arcllitecture In the inter-war years,GI But as severalof hrs studies were published dUring the occupation, this cast a cloud of suspicion over hrs very character and, what is more, a lso o ve r th e study of ruralarchitecture itself.

Another interesting figure in this respect is the architect-engineerStan Leurs (1893-1973) who conveyed his love of Flanders in an impressivewrit len work on the Flemish regions and heritage.63 His popular book seriesSteden en Landschappen ('Towns and Landscapes') is well known. and treatsbuildings and sites that can be seen as icons of regionalism in Flanders: thebeguinages. the Flemish coast region, or 'The face of the Flemish cities' Thesesmall books were published in co-operation with the Flemish Tourist Club, anorganization with which Leurs was involved from its inception in the early postwar years. Leurs saw tourism as a means of 'civilizing' all classes in society. of'culturally uplifting' the Flemish, and of creating international mutual understanding. For Leurs, the focus on one's own region was not a way of complacentlysecluding oneself, but- on the contrary- of developing a sense of self-esteemand self-knowledge that allowed one to move forward to other cultures withopenness and interest. With unflagging zeal Leurs devoted himself to educatingthe Flemish people through publications, lectures, guided tours for the FlemishTourist Club, and - from 1925 onwards - as a professor at the Institute forArchaeology and Art History of Ghent University, where he stayed on during theoccupation. Alter the end of the war, when everyone with Flemish sympathieswas stigmatized as a possible collaborator, Leurs was discharged from office.

onclusionThe concept of regionalism follows a complex line of evolution, starting in thelast decades of the nineteenth century. and influencing architecture up tilltoday. In this chapter only the period up to the Second World War is discussed.Before the First World War. regionalism had been pan of a modern reformmovement that sought to escape from the dead-end of ninteenth-eentury revivalist styles. It was rooted in the romantic and nationalist movement that shiftedthe focus 1 cultural research and grounding from classical antiquity to the richdiversity of national and regional folk cultures. This diversity still incorporatedthe notion of equality between the different nations, regions and people upuntil the 1920s.

The study of regional architecture, as well as the search for amodern regionalism was, to a large extent. driven by aesthetic concerns: howto adapt the rural and urban fabric and buildings to modern needs, without'damaging' their historical and visual essence.


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Regionalism alld modulll l ly dUlIllU Ihe IIlWr Wdl yll,l I , tteewur UI BelgJ6 VolIn 1830 rOl heden. edited by Anne V


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C Itl.l8s nOl been the10l)lC 01 II thofough sludy II ,mght be Nlterestmg lO anatvse the ardwlectural des'O of youthhostels lh


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1 l eWIs Mumford . The Fate ot t he Garden C I 1 ~ Joumal of /116 Anu1I/c mul 01 A/GIlreers FebfUlllY 1927, p 38.

2 Wel le r Clellse, The Sureh tOf EnVIronment: h Garden Ciry 8el 8 and Alrer (NewHaven: Yale Umverslty Press, 1966) p 302.

3 C1Il e


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the politicians. whose numerous deliberations culinlll


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peasant vernaculalSocial housing developed significantly after lhe Fllst World Wm,

stimulated by a series of laws (1921, 1930, 1931) as well as by lhe preparationof a master-plan for the capital, eventually established in 1934. But before thisurban plan imposed the principles of the 'Garden City', Bucharest was already a'city in a garden',l3 because of the numerous subdivisions developed in order toallow the rapid growth of the capital. By 1931. the Bucharest Communal Societyhad built 1,117 habitations for private individuals and 1,073 for institutionalclients.l The principles elaborated in the 191 Os were still operating. contributingto a rational planning of the urban fabric while giving the impression of anorganic growth. Without being imposed, the tradition-inspired 'National Style'was strongly recommended as the architecture of the new subdivisions. IS SOexcept in the centre, which adopted the dynamic aesthetics of modernism, thenew urban image of the capital proposed a modernity nurtured by tradition:regularly designed plots. with family dwellings, giving nature an important place.

During the inter-war years the first collective dwellings were built.thus completing the typologies of the individual housing system. Most of themwere connected with more or less developed patronage operations, and con-sisting of single edifices or ensembles. Regardless of their size or cost, theywere often designed by important figures of the inter-war Romanian architecture. such as Petre Antonescu for the National Bank (1930s), Statie Ciortan forthe Finance Ministry (1929) (Figure 92 L Ion Pompi lian for the Factory ofMatches (designed in 1920). Florea Stanculescu for the 'Victoria' ConstructionSociety (1928). Lucian Teodosiu for the State Monopoly Administration

tat;e Ciortanhousingunits lorthe employees ofthe MinistryofFinanceBucharest, 1929

.3Inauguration ofthe VillageMuseum, at theoccasion theMonth ofBucharest , 1936.Young princeMihai in thecentre, issurrounded byladies lrom highsociaty dressed inpeasantcostumes

ql' lJll aroas It large courtyard Ilhe Stale Monopoly Administration). a garden(lhe Factory of Matches), a square delimited by the perimeter of the edificesahe Finance Ministry and the 'Victoria' Society} or the luxury of a park (NationalBank). Moreover. however different their typology, these collective dwellingssystematically employed - like the individual dwellings of the housing operat ions - emblematic elements of the rural vernacular. Pitched roofs and picturesque porch canopies, as well as carved decorative timber elements (columns,balustrades, etc.I were used in a expressive manner (for example by Ciortanand Pomipilianl or more 'economically', like Antonescu's use of red brick as asubtle allusion to traditional roots, or Stanculescu's stylized porches adorningthe sober geometry of functionalist buildings.

Residential and housing areas thus became 'spaces of conjunction',where traditional dwelling principles were integrated into a modern vision ofthe city. Another such 'space of conjunction', in i ts own way, is the VillageMuseum, which was created as an exhibition piece in 1936 for the secondedition of the 'Month of Bucharest' (Figure 9.3). The museum reflected theassiduous work of the multidisciplinary teams organized by the sociologist

(,iu:.lr Oll{lll11ll1y, the 'vl ,19u' t l r ~ I I , l y u d 1)\IIIIIrIl{l', I ,,,,,,,,, 11I1l hllfCho:. Ihoy I l l , IUt 1IIII i lhio huIS wIllet I could hardly 00 called housos BUl In


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descrrbed as 'monuments of peasant arcllllecturc' 'L e c i U ~ H ot thu O:dl,b, 'stremendous success among the populace and Intellectuals. the munlClpalrtydecided to make It a regular event. Hence, the museum continued to graduallydevelop in the middle of a vast park facing the residential estate designed fOfthe employees of the MiOlstry of Agriculture. MOfe than evel, rurality andurbanity were blended in the same concept.

Appropriating the essence of tradition:modernist essaysThere was another approach to turning traditIOn Into a factor of modemlty,whICh concerned mostly - but not solely- the adepts of modernism. Romanranmodernists were less radical than their Western colleagues in rejecting theburden of the past, and developed a particular relat ion With local vernacular.Feeling somewhat provisional rn their relatively new-forged national identity,they could not afford to throw off the entire charge of history. Also, by retainingthe lesson of folk architecture, they believed they followed Ihe na

_rural & urban_architecture between two cultures_book

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