Value judgements

Extended, prefabricated, restored – can a practical approach produce splendid spaces too?

25 years ago
RIBA Journal, September 1985: Should a modern masterpiece stay or go? Editor Jonathan Glancey isn’t sure
Peter Palumbo would give Mendelsohn and Chermayeff’s Bexhill Pavilion another 16 years. Cedric Price would have written it off around the time of the Festival of Britain. Decaying Modern Movement buildings such as Bexhill raise a number of ironical considerations. The De La Warr Pavilion is a lovely building. It also has its place in the development of a short-lived Modern architecture that was enlightened, humane and characteristically English.

But Bexhill is also a very flawed building. It was never really tough enough to withstand the vagaries of the south coast climate. And herein lurks one of many ironies. The ‘hideous red rococo’ Edwardian guest houses and apartment blocks that established the Bexhill vernacular have lasted the course. The Pavilion has aged badly… this particular building is not pleasing in its decay. It needs loving restoration. It cannot cope with the accretions of the years.

So should it go? Or is it worth preserving a popular building and a Modernist icon that conjures up so forcibly a sincere if doomed attempt at the creation of a brave new world after the carnage of the First World War?

The 1935 building has of course now been restored. It is still not very resistant to the South Coast climate - Ed

50 years ago
RIBA Journal, September 1960: There was no Venice Architecture Biennale back then. But there was the Milan Triennale, where the British built a complete CLASP prefab school (see last month’s Parting Shot)

Every three years the organisers of the Triennale have a big battle with the park authorities regarding the use of the Parco Sempiano as a site for the erection of pavilions and other structures. The perpetuation of this ‘fair-type’ of Triennale merely leads to fiercely individualistic competition for prestige on the part of each nation represented. The climax to all this is, of course, the British school. This building dispels once and for all any doubts about the overwhelming advantages of prefabrication, modular co-ordination and all the rest. If there ever was a time to talk about an ‘international style’, surely it must be now?  Italians refuse to believe that the British school is typical of hundreds already in use throughout this country. Such scepticism would be far more justified in regard to the US prefab home… the usual, drab, stucco and frame box built for the last 150 years.

100 years ago
RIBA Journal, September 1910: A roster of fine architects could not anticipate the problems of extending the RIBA’s own premises. But at least the builders were up to it.

The institute entered into possession of the Galleries in the rear of No. 9 Conduit Street on the 24th June past, and for the past three months the rooms have been in the hands of the builders, working to get them in readiness for their new uses before the opening of the Town Planning Conference next month.

The works required to adapt the new premises to these uses have been more extensive than was originally contemplated. Many structural repairs and reconstructions have been found requisite. The drainage system of the entire building was found to be in a very defective condition, and has been reconstructed on the soundest modern principles with iron pipes throughout. The wiring of the whole premises, which was executed in the early days of electric lighting, was in a dangerous condition, and it has been found necessary to re-wire the entire building in screwed steel tubing.  The old wooden skylights… have been removed, and patent glazing with lead-covered bars substituted. An entirely new system of heating and ventilation has also been introduced [and] the three main Galleries entirely remodelled.

The Committee responsible for the premises consisted of the president (Mr. Leonard Stokes), Mr. Ernest George, Mr. Henry T. Hare, Mr. Reginald Blomfield and Mr. Edwin L. Lutyens. The work has been very expeditiously and efficiently carried out by Messrs. Holloway Bros.