No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
A Case of Cultural Schizophrenia: Ruling Tastes and Architectural Training in the Edwardian Period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
The early years of the twentieth century were ‘the period in which Victorianism became the target of ridicule, in which the search for free contemporary architectural expression was finally abandoned, in favour of forms of classicism, which having been laid aside for a great many years, possessed an adventitious novelty.’ For a cautious or conservative young architect, these years must have offered a confusing array of traditions within which he (or occasionally she) was expected to work. A set of drawings by Michael Waterhouse, from the AA Day School in 1912–13, allows us to examine one student’s reaction to this cultural whirlpool and to trace the influences that were at work in the training of young architects at this moment of transition.
- Type
- Section 3: Drawings and Designs
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001
References
Notes
1 Summerson, John, The Architectural Association 1847-1947 (London, 1947), p. 39 Google Scholar.
2 MS letter MTW to Sir John Glubb, February 1968.
3 The AA Day School had been opened in 1901.
4 Summerson, op. cit., p. 34. Margaret Richardson has pointed out that, although the AA Day School was an important step towards full-time architectural education, many young architects still stuck to pupillage. Presumably Michael Waterhouse was able to follow that route as well in his father’s office.
5 These were found among the papers of the late D. B. Waterhouse, together with a number of other drawings by Alfred and Paul Waterhouse and others, the bulk of which have now been deposited on long-term loan with the RIBA Drawings Collection. The drawings that form the subject of this article remain in the collection of the family.
6 The Architectural Association Journal, XXVII, no. 307 (September 1912), p. 96. The drawings, sadly, do not survive.
7 Alfred Waterhouse had designed a very similar one for the village Reading Room at Yattendon. Another feature Michael might have learned from his grandfather’s work is the attractive open screen of turned wooden balusters (shown on drawing MW31) that lights the side wall of the porch.
8 The Architectural Association Journal, XXVII, no. 307 (September 1912), p. 96.
9 Op. cit., no. 306 (August 1912), p. 73. Waterhouse also won the book prize for first place in the History Test. A. S. Furner came first in the Construction Test and won the prize for Free Drawing.
10 Waterhouse was almost certainly relying on Banister Fletcher as a source, and would have used the fifth edition (1905, reprinted 1910 and 1911). Conveniently, illustrations of the two orders are printed side by side in the relevant page: cf. Sir Banister Fletcher’s History of Architecture, 19th edn (1987), p. 107). The inclusion of a Phigelean temple in a ‘Study in Attic Ionic’ could have been justified on the grounds that the temple at Bassae was then thought to be the work of Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon at Athens. It was also a version of the Ionic that Waterhouse would have seen almost daily as a student of Balliol, since it was used in Cockerell’s Ashmolean Museum across the road.
11 Details (MW39), at the unusual scale of 1/5 in to 1 ft, show an order, based on the Hellenic temple of Artemis at Ephesus, on a plinth decorated with a frieze of warriors that owes a good deal to the temple of Apollo at Bassae, casts of which adorned the staircase of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, where Waterhouse undoubtedly saw them as an undergraduate. This is altered on the smaller scale drawing to a frieze of ships, but such an inconsistency is minor.
12 The Architectural Association Journal, XXIX, no. 318 (August 1913), p. 48.
13 Ibid. The drawings, unfortunately, do not survive.
14 These drawings are now on loan to the Drawings Collection of the RIBA.
15 Allibone, Finch, ‘RIBA Prize Work of the Past’, in RIBA Journal, 93, No. 12 (December 1986), pp. 47–50 Google Scholar.
16 The Architectural Association Journal, XLI, no. 464 (October 1925), pp. 90-91.
17 For a detailed discussion of the RIBA Board of Education see Horton, Ian, The Foreign Architectural Book Society and Architectural Elitism, unpublished PhD thesis, Open University, 2000 Google Scholar.
18 I.e. since 1882.
19 See Blomfield, Reginald, ‘A Note on Recent Changes in the R.I.B.A. Examinations’, in RIBA Journal, 3rd ser., XVIII (21 October 1911), pp. 767-70Google Scholar.
20 They now counted for 100 out of the total of 800 marks where previously they had rated only 40 out of 500. See Horton, op. cit., pp. 123-26.
21 The Architectural Association Journal, XXVIII, no. 314 (April 1913), pp. 294-301.
22 Ibid., p. 295.
23 Loc. cit.
24 Professor Pite, A. Beresford, ‘The Place of the Study of Building Construction in Architectural Education’, reported in The Architectural Association Journal, XXVI, no. 296 (October 1911), pp. 248-50Google Scholar.
25 Architectural Association Journal, XXVIII, no. 313 (March 1913), pp. 274-75. The report is headed by a signed sketch of Newport village street, and there is another small sketch of farm buildings at Quendon.
26 The Liverpool school was the first university school of architecture, founded in 1894-95. Reilly had only been appointed to the Liverpool school in 1904, the year after Maule had taken over the infant AA school (founded in 1902) from A. T. Bolton. (See Powers, A., ‘Arts and Crafts to Monumental Classic: the Institutionalising of Architectural Education 1900–1914’, in Bingham, N. (ed.), The Education of the Architect,. AHGB, 1993 and Crinson & Lubbock 1994.Google Scholar)
27 Lethaby, W. R. in Shaw, R. N. & Jackson, T. G. (eds), Architecture: A Profession or an Art (1892), pp. 151-52Google Scholar, quoted in Crinson, & Lubbock, , Architecture, art or profession: Three hundred years of architectural education in Britain (MUP, Manchester, 1994), p. 61 Google Scholar.
28 Alan, Powers, ‘Edwardian Architectural Education: A Study of Three Schools of Architecture’, in AA Files (January 1984), pp. 49–59 Google Scholar. Powers lists C. A. Farey, Philip Hepworth, Oliver Hill and Philip Tilden, two of whom overlapped with Michael Waterhouse. It is very likely that Farey and Waterhouse knew each other: not only did they overlap but by 1920 Farey was working for Waterhouse’s father, who presumably had spotted his talents when he was examiner for the RIBA Board of Education.
29 The Soane Medallion was won by J. M. Whitelaw, and R. W. Cable gained an Honourable Mention. Farey won the Tite Prize, and Bryan Watyson gained an Honourable Mention. Vincent Hooper won the H. Saxon Snell Prize, C. F. Butt the Arthur Cates Prize, and Hill, Joseph and Gaymer, B. P. gained Honourable Mentions for the Pugin Studentship and Owen Jones Prizes respectively: The Architectural Association Journal, XXVIII, no. 312 (February 1913), p. 254 Google Scholar.
30 See RIBA Kalendar for the appropriate years. He was also on the Prizes and Studentships Committee from 1905 till 1911. I am grateful to Ian Horton for bringing these membership lists to my notice.
31 Architectural Review, III (1898), pp. 23-27, 67-73, 115–18, 159-65.
32 Michael Waterhouse, sketchbook, 1911-12, p. 3r (dated 21 August 1911) (Private collection).
33 It is significant of its traditional stance that the AA did not admit women to the study of architecture until 1917.
34 In this context it is worth noting that H. S. Goodhart-Rendeľs first publication was an infantry drill manual.
35 The AA’s revolver club was established in 1906, with Reginald Blomfield firing the first shot. Maule himself was a noted enthusiast.
36 MS letter, MTW to Sir John Glubb, February 1968 (Private collection). The RA Drawings were eventually submitted in 1919.
37 The Broadsheet, Yattendon, June 1968.
38 Hughes, Quentin, ‘Education and the Architectural Profession in Britain at the Turn of the Century’, in Journal of Art and Design Education, 1 (1981), p. 136 Google Scholar.
39 This was the title he gave to an annual Summer Lecture to students taking the Open University course, ‘A History ofModern Architecture and Design, 1890-1905’ (A305) from 1975 to 1978.