DISFIGURING LONDON
[To the Editor of the &Errs:ran.] Sin,—London, until of late, was known (and endeared) to its familiars as a city which had kept, amid all its architectural variety, a certain distinctive unity of character, and a certain typical moderation of scale. To-day, however, we find ourselves suddenly confronted with colossal eye- sores which are wholly destructive of these traditional qualities. These abnormal edifices not only dwarf and dominate their neighbours, they unseale a whole street or quarter ; while the offence is not seldom magnified by the nature of their design and materials, and by the sheer incon- gruity of their situation. Need one recall, in this last respect, the raw brick Manchester Mill known as New Grosvenor Douse, or (although more refined in treatment) that other bleak luxury barracks of Dorchester House, with its glazed, precipitous façades ?—the two of them (to say nothing of intervening blocks) effectually combining at once to destroy the private dignity of Park Lane and to impair the public amenity of the Park itself, which together formed the choicest area of the town.
In due sequence, we have been called upon to stare skyward at the iron-crested pile of the B.B.C. head-quarters in Portland Place—stark, white (till it blackens) and overweening ; per- versely, so to speak, juxtaposed to, and hopelessly belittling the modest and mellow-toned church of All Souls and its well- known steeple. More recently still, and still more startling, we may note other erections, either proceeding or projected, which in their combined nudity and crudity seem to portend the extinction of civilized architecture us hitherto understood. "Functionalism" may be their purpose, but fitness in the true and proper sense of the term, is quite another matter
Now it will not do to lay all the blame at the door of the architectural profession, for architects, after all, must work on instructions. But a question that insistently forces itself on the critical mind is this : is there no public authority, no protective agency, no general body of opinion, which is both concerned and competent to check this progressive disfigure-
Previous page
