How to Choose an Architect
SIR,—In an otherwise helpful article on 'How to Choose an Architect' (February 17), Mr Michael Manser summarises neatly—and swallows whole—a favourite fallacy of the 1960s; the fallacy that to build in a historical style is now escapist (the vogue word is 'outdated') and unworthy of a superior in- telligence.
The steam behind this view comes partly from that ever-powerful force, fashion, and partly from the temptation to make a virtue of necessity—for to build well in a historical style is difficult and ever more expensive. Its intellectual props are bad his- tory and bad logic.
Mr Manser tells us that 'Renaissance buildings were startlingly different from Gothic, but the clients then accepted the change and so they must now.' Sir John Summerson, however, has pointed out that the Gothic continued to be used alongside Renais- sance styles in England down to the middle seven- teenth century in those contexts to which it was thought suitable, while much later still 'Wren and after him Hawksmoor reverted, without surprise or controversy, to the older style, when the spirit of continuity seemed to demand it.' Why, then, may not we too revert to classical or to Gothic, when we so choose? The architects who can help us may now be few, but they still exist.
Mr Manser's dictum that 'styles exist only in retro- spect' would have surprised men like Nash and Soane, Cockerel] and Barry, who built more usually in classical styles but cultivated Gothic, in Sir John Summerson's phrase, 'as a second language,' for use when the client wanted it. What I think Mr Manser really means is that the spirit of each age sets an inescapable mark on its products, which later archaeologists can recognise more easily than con- temporaries. If the word 'style' is used in that sense, however, it is clear that the worst builder's neo- Georgian of 1967 is as characteristic of the age and as strongly marked with its spirit and style as the best architect's neo-brutalist.
ANTHONY WAGNER
68 Chelsea Square. London SW3
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