PLACE SETTERS

Context unites this month’s nuggets from the archive – Brasilia’s freedom from planning restraint, in praise of terraced housing, and an old favourite – the mess around Stonehenge

100 years ago
RIBA Journal, March 1910: Raymond Unwin, famous for creating Letchworth and Hampstead Garden suburb, abhorred individual detached houses and explains why.

One of the architect’s great difficulties in garden cities and suburbs arises from the scattering of the buildings which is liable to take place owing to the Englishman’s desire to have each his own detached or at least semi-detached house standing in the midst of his own garden. Along these lines very little architectural effect can be produced. It is only by grouping the buildings and combining to some extent portions of the individual plots to form greens, public gardens, or open spaces, that it is possible to wed the town and country together without losing the charm of both.

It is by no means true that the most valuable use of garden space can be made by placing each house in the centre of its own plot. In fact almost the reverse is the case. Granting good and substantial party walls which will resist the passage of ordinary sounds, granted a sufficiently long frontage so that the whole of the rooms can be properly lit and ventilated from one of the two open faces, the fact that houses overlook one another and are seen from one another less when they are actually attached than when separated by the usual gap of from 10 to 30 feet (which is all that in a suburban district can usually be arranged), should greatly help to counteract the prejudice in favour of detachment.

Moreover, by building houses in groups of three, four or more, the length of the garden and therefore the distance apart of the rows of houses is greatly increased in proportion to the area of the plot. Such linking up of detached houses into groups may, by suitable design and arrangement, become the basis of a more extended grouping of these blocks into larger wholes. In this way the monotony which arises on ordinary residential streets, through the constant repetition of buildings all about one size and all too small individually to fill an adequate position in the street picture, can be avoided. Unity of effect is vastly more important than variety; in fact, variety can only be properly enjoyed when it occurs within the sheltering and embracing influence of some larger harmony or unity of effect.

50 years ago
RIBA Journal, March 1960: Unwin did not live to see the creation of Brasilia, but Sir William Holford did, and is clearly bowled over by it.

Brazilians have new buildings and new landscapes the way some people have new kitchenware. In Brasilia there is nothing to preserve: so there are no preservation societies. Nor are there any committees – as yet – to give planning permission, safeguard amenities, or protect the interests of owners. The land is federal. But all this would count for nothing if it were not for the buoyant confidence of architects and clients alike in what is being designed and built. The climate of opinion is comparable to that of Elizabethan England. There is the same spirit of adventure in the arts and sciences, the same unorthodox finance; great faith in the future, combined with fatalism; resistance to taxation but acceptance of state enterprise; extremes of wealth and poverty, with urban populations growing fast, and rural territories ... thinly peopled and partially explored.

An unmistakeable sense of direction permeates the whole design organisation – namely, that it is possible to express what Palladio and the 16th century humanists were striving for, and what Le Corbusier ... partially realised at Chandigarh, a sort of mystical unity for the social and architectural design of a whole town, strong enough to absorb the technical improvements that are bound to come, and to survive the individual monuments that will go out of date.

25 years ago
RIBA Journal, March 1985: the newly-formed English Heritage knows just how to sort out Stonehenge. Sound familiar?

Lord Montagu has led his ten-month-old commission into its first public crusade. He has decided to grasp the nettle of Stonehenge, England’s wonder of the world and yet with its squalid subway approach, busy main road and poor facilities, a running sore. (He) has put English Heritage on its mettle by announcing its support for a far-reaching programme to improve the setting of Stonehenge and facilities for visitors. At the start of its second year (his) quango will have a full set of proposals to which it is fully committed.

These are likely to involve the closure of two miles or so of the A344, a new visitor centre three quarters of a mile away and the removal of the present facilities, subway and all. To achieve this, the commission has to find large sums of money, has to engage the support of many bodies involved and has to assuage the locals who are not yet persuaded to add a few miles to their local journeys to avoid disturbing the peaceful contemplation of antiquity.
The betting is that Lord Montagu will pull it off.