11 - Pylon-Spotting in The Architectural Review 1950s–1980s

Summary

Abstract

In British architecture, the notion of post-industrialism was articulated as early as the 1910s when the activities and technologies from the First Industrial Revolution became obsolete. This post-industrialism thinking was also integral to the development of modern architecture and design in Britain, including the Arts and Crafts movement. In this chapter, we look at how the discussions about post-industrialism were developed in the influential magazine The Architectural Review in the post-war era. This study points out that in British architecture, the notion of the postindustrial reflects a complex attitude towards progress and decline. In this effort, pylons—the supposed icon of modern progress—will be used as a linchpin for tracing the convoluted intellectual terrain in architectural post-industrialism.

Keywords: pylons; architectural magazine; postmodern architecture; hi-tech architecture

Encase your legs in nylons,

Bestride your hills with pylons

O age without a soul;

Away with gentle willows

And all the elmy billows

That through your valleys roll…

In his 1955 poem “Inexpensive Progress,” the pre-eminent British poet John Betjeman laments the destruction to English culture and landscape brought by rapid industrialization. He uses pylons and nylons as examples of modern industrial inventions that displace old villages, grassy hills, and other picturesque features of the British landscape. In a later part of the poem, Betjeman also criticizes changes that are now more commonly labelled as post-industrial and postmodern. He bemoans the losses of the provincial High Streets and writes, “but let the chain stores place here, their miles of black glass facia, and traffic thunder through.” “Inexpensive Progress” offers a glimpse into the disorienting landscape found in post-war Britain: the manufacturing industries were expanding, and the changes brought by globalized trade and commerce were also becoming more visible. A developing nostalgia for the ways commerce and communication were organized in the past are also manifest in Betjeman's poem and other literary works.

Betjeman's critique of British landscapes and townscapes is shared by the writers and editors of an influential architectural magazine, The Architectural Review (AR), for which he once worked as an editor. The AR is a monthly architectural magazine founded in London in 1896. Under the editorship of Hubert de Cornin Hastings in the late 1920s, the journal became a leading proponent of architectural modernism in Britain. Throughout the twentieth century, the AR remained an influential voice in British architecture.