One Day in the City

Anne Hultzsch teaches architectural history at the Bartlett (UCL) where she has recently also been awarded her PhD. She is currently researching Nikolaus Pevsner's role at the Architectural Review for which she has received a RIBA Research Trust Award. She is also working on the book project Architecture, Travellers and Writers: Constructing Histories of Perception 1640-1950 (Legenda, forthcoming 2013).

Abstract:

Hunting for Treasures: Nikolaus Pevsner and Everyday Architecture

'...looking at houses can be entertainment as well as an object lesson, a family game (Date your District) as well as a treasure hunt'

It was with such rousing rhetoric that Nikolaus Pevsner discussed examples of Victorian architecture in a 1942 series of articles in the Architectural Review. In an attempt to change readers' attitude towards the often loathed buildings of what was then the recent past, the now famous architectural historian specifically addressed the layperson: men and women on their way to work, rushing to or from underground stations, bus stops and offices. Hardly any remarkable architecture is considered but rather those anonymous rows and ensembles of buildings that shape the streets of London without being noticed much. In face of the raging destruction of the London Blitz and the ongoing debates about reconstruction, Pevsner invited the reader to join his 'dating game' - as he explained idiosyncrasies of distinct decades he hoped that by understanding intellectually, readers will start to appreciate aesthetically.

This paper will, while following Pevsner's writing gaze, point out parallels between stylistic developments taking place both in architecture as well as in criticism. As Modernism had done away with historicism and eclectic styles in buildings, it had also rendered Victorian connoisseurship, or 'literary' criticism, inadequate. How did the Modern focus on function and plan shape the ways in which the unloved buildings of the recent past were looked at? How did such changes influence the encounter with everyday architecture - those buildings that we often hardly remember?