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DECORATIVE ART The Studio Year Book 1956-57
Extrait
Premières pages de l'ouvrage, en accès libre.
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DECORATIVE ART 1956-57
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DECORATIVE VOLUME 46
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Hand carved sweet or nut dishes in mountain-ash. Designed and made by Nanny Still (FINLAND) ART 1956 - 1957 --- THE STUDIO YEAR BOOK OF FURNISHING AND DECORATION EDITED BY RATHBONE HOLME AND KATHLEEN FROST --- THE STUDIO PUBLICATIONS : LONDON AND NEW YORK
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Editors wish to express their grateful thanks to the designers, architects and manufacturers whose work is represented in this volume; their assistance in supplying photographs and information has been of great help in its production. Appreciation is also due to our correspondents overseas through whose efforts we are able to maintain a wide international coverage. Particular acknowledgment is due to the cordial co-operation given by Signor A. M. Allemandi, of Milan; Mr. Alfred Altherr of the Schweizerischer Werkbund, Zürich; Mr. Stig Björkman, of Svenska Hem, Stockholm; Mr. D. W. Buchanan, of The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Mr. Bryan Holme of The Studio Publications Inc, New York; Mr. Bent Salicath, of Dansk Kunstha-andværk, Copenhagen; Mrs. G. L. de Snellman-Jaderholm, of Helsinki; M. Pierre Vago, of Paris; and Miss Carmen Valdes of Saber Vivir Buenos Aires. --- PUBLISHED IN LONDON BY THE STUDIO LTD, 55 CHANDOS PLACE, W.C.2 AND IN NEW YORK BY THE STUDIO PUBLICATIONS INC, 432 FOURTH AVENUE PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS LIMITED LONDON AND BECCLES
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CONTENTS Housing Everyman’s Family by Eric L. Bird, MBE, MC, ARIBA 6 Houses and Apartments: - Vancouver—Canada 12 - Pretoria—South Africa 13 - Hampstead, London, N.W.6 14 - Kensington Palace Gardens, London, W.8 15 - Mar del Plata—Argentina 16 - St. Nazaire—France 17 - Hayes Common, Kent 18 - Mayfair, London, W.I 19 Rooms and Furniture 20 Textiles and Rugs 64 Ceramics 80 Glass 96 Tableware and Silver 108 Lighting 122 Index 145
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It is the custom to look back with nostalgia and envy upon the great architectural periods of the past. Such masterpieces of design as history upholds for the world to admire were indeed fine tributes to man’s achievement, but in no possible circumstances could they be considered as representative of the average housing amenities universally enjoyed. If we compare the distributed benefits of architecture to-day with those of up to one hundred years ago, we find a remarkable rise in housing standards; a rise which is sometimes obscured by thoughts of what has happened to the English landscape in consequence. The task of housing Everyman’s family is now recognised as a factor whose social importance transcends most other considerations; creating domestic issues on which governments may stand or fall. Nevertheless the manner in which amenities are provided is an architectural as well as a social problem and for this reason the editors invited Eric L. Bird, MBE, MC, ARIBA, who was himself the distinguished former editor of the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, to contribute this leading article. It is concerned with factors involved in attaining high standards of housing for everyone and reviews them against the background of housing development during the last hundred years. A tower or ‘point’ block of flats with eleven storeys and four flats to a storey. The Swedes originated the type and this is a Swedish example. Point blocks have lifts, central heating and refuse chutes, and each flat its own private balcony. (Photo: F. E. B. MacManus) HOUSING EVERYMAN’S FAMILY The Beginnings of a World Movement With the growth of educated democracies during the last hundred years there has been an expanding acceptance of the idea that all families ought to be well housed. Historically this idea is very new. Until about a hundred years ago it was tacitly accepted that ‘peasants’ lived in hovels and ‘workers’ in urban slums. The soaring cathedrals and castles of medieval Europe and the dwellings of the wealthy and powerful in Renaissance times had as neighbours miserable shacks or congested rookeries where the poor wallowed in disease, crime and ignorance, the customary cures for these social evils being charity or repression. The humanitarian movement of the nineteenth century was a war against ignorance, disease and squalor. Universal education could abolish ignorance and sanitary measures ameliorate the worst effects of disease. But it was soon realised that these alone were incomplete cures. Bad housing was a basic cause of ill-health as well as of crime, child delinquency and social unrest. If an educated democracy, in which all were to have equal opportunities, was to be achieved, then good housing for all had to be provided. Those in the lower income groups could not afford to provide themselves with dwellings of a satisfactory standard and it did not pay the speculator to build houses for them to rent or buy by instalments. For some time this provision was left to charity in the form of voluntary housing societies (many of which are still active) or to beneficent owners of large estates. But soon it came to be accepted that housing, like education and the promotion of health, was a duty of the State. The housing movement was born and nurtured in Great Britain. The Englishman, Titus Salt, was one of the first men to grasp the idea that the provision of housing was a duty of the powers-that-be, which in his time meant the great landowners and manufacturers. Salt was a textile manufacturer who, animated about equally by humanitarianism and sound business sense, built the new town of Saltaire in Lancashire for his workpeople. His example was followed by others, notably Leverhulme at Port Sunlight and Cadbury at Bournville. Gradually, but with increasing momentum, the housing movement spread in Great Britain and in those countries where auto-
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cratic rule was being replaced by parliamentary government. The most highly developed and socially conscious countries are to-day the leaders in housing and the need for housing is now becoming recognised as a world problem, so much so that it is being vigorously advocated by the United Nations. The Principle of the Subsidy During the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries, new dwelling accommodation for the industrial workers crowding into towns was provided by speculative builders. The standards were of necessity very low and much of this accommodation is now regarded as slum. But as the problem of housing the poor became more widely envisaged, it resolved itself into determining a means whereby the State could bridge the gap between an economic rent and the rent which the poorer occupiers could afford to pay. Acceptance of the principle of the State subsidy really started the housing movement. The methods of administering the subsidy have varied widely and no two countries have identical procedure. Great Britain made local government responsible, though for a few years in the inter-war period a subsidy was granted to private and speculative builders. Sweden has established H.S.B., a national housing corporation, but also promotes municipal building. Denmark and the Netherlands grant subsidies to controlled private enterprise in the form of housing associations, co-operatives and building companies. The United States encourages municipalities to undertake slum clearance and rebuilding by means of Federal loans and local tax remission. In Northern Ireland subsidies are payable on all new housing, whether that by The Northern Ireland Housing Trust (a government-established body akin to H.S.B.), by municipalities or by private enterprise. But whatever the method employed, the objective is the same in all cases namely, good housing for all. From being thought of as a form of charity for the manual worker, housing has gradually spread its scope upwards in the social scale until to-day it is embracing the skilled artisan and clerical worker. Almost, but not quite, housing has come to be regarded as a fundamental human right. British Housing After some early permissive legislation under which 11,000 houses had been built, it was in 1918 that housing as a governmental duty became firmly established by the passing into law of the Addison Act. This act imposed on local authorities the duty and gave them the powers to build houses for renting to the ‘working classes’ and it established the subsidy principle. This system still persists, though it has undergone much alteration and improvement. Under it were built 1,332,189 ‘council houses’ up to the outbreak of the 1939–45 war. From 1946 to the end of 1955 a further 1,665,776 have been built. Also to be added to these figures are 160,000 so-called ‘temporary’ prefabricated dwellings, erected to meet the urgent housing shortage after the 1939–45 war. Thus under State aid more than three million houses have been built in Great Britain. One result has been that many cities now own from 15 to 25 per cent of all dwellings in their areas. Since 1919, 2,997,965 houses have been built by the private enterprise of speculative builders, of non-profit-making housing associations and of individuals. Building by the housing associations was for lower paid workers, that by individuals was for their own occupation and that by speculative builders for an intermediate class who wished to be house-owners and who financed purchase through repayable loans from building societies. Broadly speaking, private enterprise has met the housing needs of the ‘black-coated’ workers and State subsidised local authority building those of manual workers. But the housing demand in Britain is by no means fully met. Increasing population and younger marriage continue to keep the target far ahead. The replacement of slums in Britain did not become fully operative until the Acts of 1930 and 1936 gave local authorities wide powers to condemn areas of bad housing and to rebuild. By the outbreak of the 1939–45 war, most cities had cleared their worst slums but the work then ceased until reanimated by a new Act in 1955. Popular Acceptance of Housing Considered broadly, the housing effort of Britain is an achievement of which its people may well be proud; in quantity it is well in advance of that of other countries. Naturally, mistakes have been made; for example, at first too much land was covered by a rash of identical two-storey houses and without proper provision of social amenities. But most of these mistakes have been rectified or, at least, recognised. A most important feature of the housing movement in Britain has been the growth of housing-mindedness in the general public. Not only has there been created a large body of technicians— Modern private enterprise housing. A scheme of two-storey flats at Richmond, Surrey, for Bargood Estates Ltd. Designs of this quality are all too rare in housing built by private enterprise for sale or letting. Architect: Eric Lyons, FRIBA
