People Places Alan Powers

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People and places: essay four

Beauty: a short historyAlan Powers


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Contents

Introduction 5

The classical heritage 8

Beauty and the birth of modern science 10

Classicism and Romanticism in town and

country 14

Disenchantment 18

The City Beautiful 20

Modernism and beauty 21

Conservation and beauty 23

The beauty question today 25

About the author 28

Published in 2010 by the Commission for

Architecture and the Built Environment.

Graphic design by CABE

Cover photo: Knaresborough Andy Graham.

An entry to our photo competition to nd Areas of

Outstanding Urban Beauty.

The views expressed in this publication are the

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encourage policy makers to create places that work

for people. We help local planners apply national

design policy and offer expert advice to developersand architects. We show public sector clients how

to commission buildings that meet the needs of their

users. And we seek to inspire the public to demand

more from their buildings and spaces. Advising,

inuencing and inspiring, we work to create

welldesigned, welcoming places.

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This document is available inalternative formats on requestfrom the publisher.


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Introduction

The story of our thinking about beauty could beseen as a single movement from certainty to doubt.

This storyline reects the growing complexity of theworld and the loss of religious and philosophicalconviction. Thomas Hardy described this inBefore life and afteras the disease of thinkingwhich causes the loss of an inner convictionthat, visual evidence tells us, existed beforethe birth of consciousness. In the same waythat many people believe it is better to restrictreligion to personal belief and action, rather thanmaking it a public principle, so the idea of beautyretreated long ago to become a matter of personalpreference and experience not necessarily killed

by consciousness but better left understated.Politicians, planners and even architects are shyabout invoking it.

Here I suggest that there are some understandablepressures that led to our present reticence aboutbeauty. At the same time, there is every reasonto try to work with the idea again. As the MORIresearch commissioned by the Commission forArchitecture and the Built Environment (CABE)shows, the public values beauty and not only

wants it in their homes, clothes and other personalbelongings, but also in the great outdoors, thepublic realm and public life. New technologiesoffer opportunities for more participative andconstructive conversations about planning andbeauty at a local and national level resultingin a greater understanding about the importanceof beauty to our mental and physical wellbeing.

SomersetHouse,LondonDavidCowlard

The public

values beauty

and not onlywants it in

their homes,

clothes and

other personal

belongings, but

also in the great

outdoors, the

public realm

and public life.


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There is a growing recognition among the public,and increasingly among politicians and policy

makers, that there is more to life than economicgrowth and that non-material values matter too.True, the recession and public spending cutsare concentrating our minds once again on hardnecessities, but my sense is that, especially inthese difcult times, the public will respond to anyattempt to rehabilitate beauty.

In 1916, during the First World War, when itseemed as if the world would change permanently,the architect W R Lethaby was a great believer ineveryday beauty as a saving grace in difcult times:

For the earlier part of my life I was quieted by beingtold that ours was the richest country in the world,until I woke up to know that what I meant by richeswas learning and beauty, and music and art, coffeeand omelettes; perhaps in the coming days ofpoverty we may get more of these.1

The brief history of beauty that follows is a storylinewith an arc. Every chapter has made beauty amore difcult subject for people at the time to

discuss although it is fascinating and importantto understand how and why the subject becamevirtually off limits, at least for professionals in artand design who might be expected to care about it.

This storyline also has a repetitive oscillationbetween two polarities of beauty, which accountsfor the subjects complexity the word means

different things at different times. One extremeis the rational understanding of beauty and the

search to boil down the essence into formulae andmodels for application. The other is the romanticunderstanding based on personal experience andinsight that is not open to explanation or proof.Much of the history of architecture or at leastBritish architecture can be written in terms ofthis oscillation between rational and romanticunderstandings of beauty.

1 Form in Civilisation,

Lethaby, 1922

It is fascinating

and important

to understandhow and why

beauty became

virtually off

limits.


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The classical heritage

The middle ages took their idea of beauty chieyfrom Platos philosophy which states that beauty istaken for granted as part of the divine order. JohnKeats later assertion beauty is truth, truth beautyessentially reinstates this belief. Even so, as Platoand the early Christian thinkers insisted, beauty wasalso a dangerous business in which the Devil couldpervert the righteous with the lusts of the esh andthe eye.

The Reformation violently disrupted British peoplesrelationship with the visual arts. Visiting anymedieval country church today, we are likely to seeempty statue niches, gures with defaced heads or

windows of reassembled stained glass. Fragmentsof painted wall or woodwork have survived, if at all,by accident or stealth and revealed after centuriesunder coats of whitewash. Historians, such asEamon Duffy, have recreated what it must havefelt like to be an ordinary pious believer bereftof the familiar comforts of a coherent system ofidea and image and catapulted into a new worldwhere God came in the sacred word but not in thesights and smells of the church2. Other Protestantcountries in northern Europe underwent similar

iconoclastic transformations, but in few was itas extreme. The churches of England, Scotland,Ireland and Wales were systematically devastatedover the course of two centuries. Perhaps this is asufcient explanation of our problem with beauty visual beauty was not so much suppressed asforcibly moved from the sacred to the secularareas of society. In fact, the wealth unlocked by

the dissolution of the monasteries stimulated a richperiod of creativity seen in Elizabethan prodigy

houses such as Hardwick Hall, which stand on thecusp between old and new worlds.

We see the professional architect emerge as amember of the intelligentsia even more betweenthe Tudor and Stuart periods. Inigo Jones began hiscareer as a stage designer in the court of James I,but his journeys to Italy before 1620 were a turningpoint for the future of British taste. He reected onthe turmoil of his ideas in his Roman sketchbookas ying forth from a designers heated brain.But he recognised that, as with behaviour in

public, architecture needed discipline and shouldbe sollid, proporsionabl according to the rules,masculine and unaffected.

Jones brought Palladio drawings back from Italythat have since helped to shape national style andtaste. One outcome of his Covent Garden houseelevations was the creation of a pattern of windowsizes and oor heights conforming to the classicalorders with a basement at ground level, twostoreys over it, followed by a cornice and parapet.

This pattern demonstrates what he meant byproporsionabl according to the rules and becamethe basic component of English urban design.

2 The Stripping of the

Altars, Eamon Duffy,

1992

Our problem

with beauty

is that it wasnot so much

suppressed

as forcibly

moved from

the sacred to

the secular.


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Beauty and the birth of modern science

Renaissance designers and theorists used the10 books of architecture by Vitruvius the onlysubstantial text on the subject from the ancientworld and a formative inuence on revivedclassicism. Vitruvius summarised architecture inthree words: rmitas, utilitas and venustas. The lastis often translated as beauty, implying a physicalor sensual quality to the experience named after agoddess. Florentine architect Alberti substitutedthis word with amoenitas amenity, which doesnot have much strength in current usage but isassociated with pleasure and delight. This meaningwas conveyed in 1624 when Sir Henry Wottontranslated the three original words as commoditie,

rmeness and delight.3

The Vitruvian man a gure with outstretchedarms in a circle demonstrates the ancient beliefthat beauty resulted from following the proportionsof the body. This remains a powerful idea, even ifthe actual measurements only approximate to thepure equations of the formula. The majority of olderbuildings have a naturally graceful scale in elementssuch as doors and windows, while timber and stoneset limits on the absolute size of structures, giving

them what is often called a human scale. These areelements of beauty that are not achieved so easilyin an age of mechanised construction.

Sir Christopher Wren designer of St PaulsCathedral and the dominant design mind of thesecond half of the sixteenth century was amathematician and astronomer before an architect.

It is not surprising that he enjoyed the Renaissancebelief that the higher forms of beauty were based

on numbers, akin to the harmonies of music andthe movements of the planets. He rendered theVitruvian triad using the terms beauty, rmenessand convenience, explaining:

There are two causes of beauty, natural andcustomary. Natural is from geometry, consistingin uniformity (that is equality) and proportion.Customary beauty is begotten by the use of oursenses to those objects which are usually pleasingto us for other causes, as familiarity or a particularinclination breed a love to things not in themselves

lovely.4

The ideal of pure geometry remains deeply rootedin western consciousness as the basis of beauty.It sits well with the idea that beauty is an expertbusiness, not accessible to the untrained mind.The dominance of this interpretation was soonchallenged by new voices of common sense. InFrance in 1683 Claude Perrault wrote about theclassical orders the various columns observedin Roman ruins and listed with their correct

proportions by Vitruvius. He questioned the ideathat nite numerical relationships could be thedening cause of beauty, arguing that the ancientshad no magic formula to connect architecture tothe cosmos an idea so shocking that it remaineddormant for over a hundred years.

In Britain, the amateur architect Roger North also4 Parentalia,

Christopher Wren,

1750

3 De architectura,

Marcus Vitruvius

Pollio, 1486-, De

re aedificatoria, L.

B. Alberti, 1452,

The Elements of

Architecture, Henry

Wotton, 1624

The idea that

beauty is an

expert businessremains

deeply rooted

in western

consciousness.


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took a different direction from Wren, claiming thatbeauty lay in the way that elements were composedwith variation of rhythm and scale, something thateveryone could see and appreciate. This idea alsoinuenced subsequent thought and taste.

The Great Fire of London was the perfect occasionto rebuild the city as an example of civic humanism.Wren and his scientic colleague Robert Hookeprovided plans with straight radial streets, atwhose junctions major buildings could be seen as demonstrated in the re-planning of Rome. Butbecause of the need to rebuild quickly, and thehostility towards any form of royal intervention,

none of this happened. The Royal Naval Hospitalat Greenwich, carried out under Wren and hissuccessors in the Ofce of the Kings Works, givesus the best idea of what an absolute monarchy,like that of Louis XIV in France, could have done tochange the face of London and other cities.

The rst two King Georges lacked interest in thearts, leaving the aristocracy to take on the role ofartistic patronage in the cause of civic humanism.A pure ancient Roman style of architecture

received via Vitruvius and Jones was advocatedas essentially British, Protestant and virtuous.The more emotionally engaging classical styleof Baroque represented in England by Wrenand his followers, Nicholas Hawksmoor and JohnVanbrugh was condemned as foreign and over-personalised. In the manifesto-like introduction tohis 1715 book Vitruvius Britannicus, the ambitious

architect Colen Campbell rhetorically condemnedthe works of architects now seen as geniuses:How affected and licentious are the works ofBernini and Fontana? How wildly extravagant arethe designs of Borromini, who has endeavouredto debauch mankind with his odd and chimericalbeauties, where the parts are without proportion;solids without their true bearing, heaps of materialswithout strength, excessive ornament withoutgrace, and the whole without symmetry.5

This episode represents one of the mostsudden oscillations of the kind described above.Hawksmoors churches and Vanbrughs country

houses were effectively put out of bounds forarchitects effectively until the 1950s, althoughseveral free-thinkers learned from their powerfulevocations of Romanitas.

Beauty lay in

the way that

elements

were

composed

with variation

of rhythm

and scale,

something

that everyone

could see and

appreciate.

5 Vitruvius Britannicus,

Colen Campbell , 1715


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Classicism and Romanticism in town

and country

The Palladians believed they had architecture backon a track of timeless stability.

We can compare buildings in Greenwich withSomerset House, designed by a later Palladian,Sir William Chambers. In place of the formersswagger of domes and vistas, we feel the qualityof the craftsmanship and materials while enjoyingChambers audacity as an engineer in the NelsonStair and his clever borrowing from a sixteenthcentury Roman palace in the arched entrance offthe Strand. All the same, it is a building that hasoften been condemned as dull in its larger assemblyof repetitive parts.

Georgian town planning is still seen as a majorcontributor to world urbanism. It reaches its heightwith the achievement of the two John Woods father and son in Bath, with the citys urbanestreets, squares and circuses employing Palladianforms to almost Baroque effect.

It was John Gwynn, a contemporary of Chambersand fellow founder of the Royal Academy, whobrought a practical aspect to the discussion of

urban beauty that had previously been lacking.Inspired by Wrens largely forgotten scheme forthe city, Gwynn used the centenary of the GreatFire in 1766 to publish London and WestminsterImproved6, the rst action-based book on urbanplanning in British history which claimed that inthe present state of building, the nest part of thetownis left to the mercy of capricious, ignorant

persons. His plan was mostly concerned withlayouts drawn on top of the narrow and often maze-like streets of the capital, for which he blamed ashort-term view of nancial return. It was partly amatter of patriotic pride to convince the world thatblundering is not the only characteristic of Englishbuilders, and partly a philanthropic conviction thatpublic magnicence would promote the welfare ofmankind.

Tastes, however, were changing. Designers,notably Vanbrugh, and their public became moreappreciative of non-classical forms and styles.It was recently discovered that, uniquely among

architects of his generation, Vanbrugh originallya protg of Wren travelled to India. This makessense of the crowded chimneys on the skyline ofBlenheim Palace. Vanbrugh built his own houseat Blackheath in the form of a castle, and set anew value on customary beauty when he arguedin 1709 with the Duchess of Marlborough overthe retention of the ruins of Woodstock Castleon associational and historical grounds. Gothicbuildings and exotic gardens and landscapes,created as subjects for learned conversation and

amusement, soon became an important part ofmany architects repertory. Attempts to imitate theformal architecture of Paris in London were lessimpressive in French eyes than the novelty of thejardin anglais, which became a progressive fashionacross Europe with its connotation of politicalfreedom as a replacement to the Versailles tradition.6 London and

Westminster Improved,

John Gwynn, 1766

Gothic

buildings and

exotic gardens

and landscapes

soon became

an important

part of many

architects

repertory.


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The purity of serious architecture did not have tobe compromised. While customary beauty in thisform was the antidote to the boredom of over-familiar forms, it was also an avenue for seriousinvestigation into national identity and personalfeeling expressed in sensationalist theories ofart and architecture. In 1757 Edmund Burkepublished Philosophical Enquiry into the Originof our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Bothof these categories were familiar from antiquity:beauty being associated with feminine qualities ofsmoothness, curvaciousness and poise7; and thesublime with their masculine opposites. In givingnew prominence to the sublime the aesthetic

emotion occasioned by fear of danger Burkecontributed to the idea that our sense of beautyis spontaneous and unpredictable. Moving awayfrom the orderly end of the see-saw, Burke reducedbeauty to something potentially safe and dull. Thiswas one more step in the retreat from the Platonicview of a universal and unchanging standard ofbeauty.

Burkes work was reviewed in Germany andpraised by Immanuel Kant in 1790 in his Critique

of Judgement, where he made beauty even moreof a subjective and personal concern, ratherthan an agreed goal to which a whole populationcould aspire. The classical ideal was by this stageseriously undermined. Although, ironically, theearly stages of doubt freed up the potentially rigidsystem to produce some of the most admired andskilful designs of the whole Renaissance period.

Further English thinking came with the theory of thePicturesque in the 1790s adding a third categoryto Burkes in order to account for an in-betweensensibility to landscape and the accidents of historyand weather, which showed neither the smoothabstract perfection of beauty nor the extremeemotions of the sublime. The Picturesque remains afamiliar set of attitudes and today the word beautywill often be used to describe what could morestrictly be called picturesque.

The development of Regents Park from 1811remains a witness to a new combination of thebeautiful and the picturesque. Where nature in the

form of woodland, market garden or hay meadowhad previously reached the garden walls of newterraces of houses pushing out at the edges ofthe city, it was now made ornamental in advance,providing the prototype for municipal parks innorthern cities such as Birkenhead and Derby in the1840s.

Beauty

became even

more of a

subjective

and personal

concern,

rather than

an agreed

goal to which

a whole

population

could aspire.

7 Philosophical

Enquiry into the Origin

of our Ideas of the

Sublime and Beautiful,

Edmund Burke, 1757


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Disenchantment

At Regents Park, urban design stands on the cuspof Classical and Romantic. Its architectural andsocial individualism is expressed in free-standingvillas, each in a different style and evoking elementsof the past with the insouciance of a Hollywoodepic. For some Romantics, such as Wordsworthstanding on Westminster Bridge in 1802, a citycould wear the beauty of the morning like agarment. This indulgence to the city was a rareemotion and Wordsworths contemporaries, suchas Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Blake sawcities, above all modern cities, as a symptom anda cause of mankinds fall from a primordial state ofgrace a view that increased in strength through

the course of the nineteenth century.

Some nineteenth century theorists, such asJohn Ruskin, claimed that a rotten society wouldinevitably make rotten architecture and cities. Hisgeneration saw beauty in urban and rural placesdisappear under a pall of soot, while a more subtlecorruption seemed to be working in peoples mindsand blinding their eyes. Driven to despair by hisinability to do anything about it, Ruskin turned inmiddle life from writing about art, for which we

chiey remember him, to politics and economics an area where his ideas are arguably more relevantbut less well known.

Far from being a slave to historical precedent,Ruskin inspired designers to see with fresh eyes.He was certain that beauty had been steadilydeclining through history a view that many were

willing to share along with growing awarenessthat an artists life could be well spent battlingagainst ugliness. The effort was continued in newinstitutions such as east end settlement houses andthe studios of Chelsea.

Ruskins ideas inuenced the foundation of theNational Trust in 1895, as he emphasised the needto vest natural places and scenery in a semi-publicform of ownership. At the same time, the arts andcrafts became a starting point for two contradictorytendencies in architecture. One was a return toeighteenth century Classicism, bringing a newsensitivity to context, craftsmanship and materials.

The other was an embryonic form of Modernism,looking for a rational, scientic architecture notreliant on the past. And in 1895, Oscar Wildestrial helped to discredit Aestheticism, leading toa long period of safety and dullness in the publicexpression of beauty.

A rotten

society would

inevitably

make rotten

architecture

and cities.


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The City Beautiful

This American movement expressed the condenceof a growing economy. The Worlds ColumbianExposition of 1893, with its grand, French-inspiredclassical architecture, was progressive in itssocial aims although stylistically conservative. Itemphasised the benets of good planning in termsof economic efciency, health and social cohesion.City Beautiful depersonalised beauty in theinterests of the machine age and social conformity.It was a signicant model for Britain, feeding intothe Garden City movement and schemes such asthe Aldwych and Kingsway in London. The see-sawwas poised in midair until 1900, when Classicismstarted to push the arts and crafts down.

But this new Classicism was all too often heartlessand formulaic. For all its good intentions, CityBeautiful was no guarantee of beauty a warningagainst thinking that beauty can be squeezed outof a tube and applied like toothpaste to freshenus up. However, we must allow its importancein reasserting the value of a public realm theprovision of shared spaces such as parks andsquares for the use of all citizens. Only rarephilanthropists took care of these things in the

materialist industrial period, while in the twentiethcentury they were seen as essential to socialstability and well-being.

Modernism and beauty

Technological change occurred at a more rapid ratebetween 1890-1914 than during any equivalentperiod of time, bringing powered ight, telephones,domestic electricity supply and motor cars, andsteel framed construction and reinforced concretein the building world.

One of the leading architectural ideas of modernismwas function. This was a valuable antidote to theexcessive decoration of the late nineteenth centuryand allowed designers to return to basics ofproportion and abstract form. The idea that beautysimply comes from the effective and economicaltranslation of function into form, however, is

attractive but problematic in action. The results maynot appear beautiful, and by excluding so mucharchitectural expression, modernism has arguablymade it more difcult for many people to appreciateand understand architecture. Real people and realowers are not abstractions, but complex formalorganisations, and if this complexity is missing fromthe man-made world of modernism, then beauty isalso at risk.

Modernism therefore has a complex relationshipto beauty, depending on how we select and shapeour denition. It is better to look at actual buildingsand judge them on their merits than to take theorytoo literally. In modernism, qualities of space areall important, but hard to convey in photographs.The views from a building and its relationship tothe site are often more important than in earlierbuildings and contribute towards understanding

City Beautiful

depersonalised

beauty in the

interests of

the machine

age and social

conformity.


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the architects intentions. Rather than being a niteobject, the building becomes a set of frames andscreens between surrounding outdoor spaces,and this relationship can sometimes be magicallyextended by landscape design.

In Britain, the 1934 De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhillby Mendelsohn and Chermayeff, presents fewproblems of appreciation. It is romantic in spirit andbuilt to a human scale. Its position by the sea andthe effect of light created by water are integral to itsdesign. Modern architecture can combine a worldof facts and functions with another of imagination.As Le Corbusier wrote, techniques are merely the

dinner plates of poetry at the end of the meal,your mind is released to dream.8

During the materially constrained post-war years,architects and planners hoped to banish theinequality, dirt and confusion of the past, replacingit with a new picturesque vision of man at ease withnature and served by clean unobtrusive technology.New schools and universities tried to capturethe vision. For a time after the war, enabled bylegislation that increased public control of formerly

private resources and opportunities, planningseemed to hold the key to a holistic reworking ofthe natural and man-made environments.

Conservation and beauty

What went wrong? There were many enemiesof beauty that dominated post-war architectureand planning, but two had overriding effects that

contributed to a revulsion against new architecture.One was impatience with the past and its relics thatcaused older cities to be dismissed as worthless,despite the presence of ne buildings, spacesand potential modern lifestyles. The second,serving the rst, was the proliferation of privatecars and the willingness to give them roads andparking places, meanwhile neglecting investmentin public transport. A rapidly creeping subtopiaof non-places was the result. Philip Larkin vividlyexpressed the moral and physical decline of the rst

age of consumerist democracy:

Despite all the land left free,For the rst time I feel somehowThat it isnt going to last,

That before I snuff it, the wholeBoiling will be bricked in

Except for the tourist partsFirst slum of Europe, a roleIt wont be so hard to win,With a cast of crooks and tarts.9

However, the conservation movement was wellestablished by the time of this poem, and it isimportant to remember that planners and architectshad taken a leading role. Conservation movedfrom a museum-like focus on individual structures8 Precisions, Le

Corbusier, 1930

Modern

architecture

can combine

a world of

facts and

functions

with

another of

imagination.

9 High Windows,

Going, Going, Philip

Larkin, 1974


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towards an appreciation of context, mirroringchanges in scientic thought away from isolatedstudy towards the understanding of complexinteraction in habitats and environments. Thecreation of Conservation Areas in 1967 meanthistoric buildings could be protected in a setting,perhaps consisting of several streets, with theirtrees and landscapes as well as the bricks andstones.

Conservation was far more powerful as a means ofrestoring ideas of beauty in the public realm thanarchitecture and planning of new buildings had everbeen on their own. It was also a means of engaging

a citizen population in debate and decision-makingabout their environment.

People today certainly have much to thankconservationists for, as mistakes of the recent pastare reversed, and buildings such as St PancrasStation nally nd a leading role in a modernisedpublic service infrastructure.

The beauty question today

What types of beauty have we identied in history,and which of these could still be useful today?The scale and proportions of the human body, as

reected in classical architecture, help us establisha personal relationship to external objects. Thefocus on spaces between buildings in Georgiancities provided practical benets of greenery andfresh air, as well as relieving the monotony of rowsof houses. The Victorians, for all their doubts andanxieties, rediscovered individual craftsmanshipand launched the environmental movement in timeto save wild nature. City Beautiful gave us themodel for integrated modern infrastructure in amass society and the Modern Movement wiped off

the make-up to nd the bone structure of buildingsbeneath.

These are insights and achievements of westernarchitecture, now spreading to most parts of theglobe. Other world traditions of beauty, however,also have things to teach us. The contemplativeminimalist spaces of Japanese interiors, forexample, or the intricate abstract patterns of Islamictiles in cool courtyards shut off from dusty noisystreets.

It is painful to abandon certainty in the passagetowards doubt that I outlined at the beginningof this essay. But certainty can encouragecomplacency and dogmatism. While a unifyingconception of, or understanding of, beauty inarchitecture and design feels in some ways moreelusive now than it has ever been, there are

A unifying

conception

of beauty in

architecture

and design

feels more

elusive now

than it has ever

been


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grounds to hope that beauty has a role to play ininforming and inuencing governments, nationaland local. MORIs research shows that people careabout beauty and that they want to see more of it.They recognise it as important to both individualand collective well-being. This is part of a growingbody of knowledge and expertise among scientists,historians, policy makers, and above all plannersand designers.

Perhaps the key thing is to have the condenceto say beauty matters, and not to be afraid ofthe reaction; to see it as benecial and valuableto the public, and not beyond the ability of most

people to achieve. Insight and care count for morethan money where beauty is concerned, which isparticularly signicant now, as the country facesmassive cuts to public spending. When choosingforeign countries to visit, we often favour those thatmay be poorer than our own, but have a richnessof culture that is manifested in the beauty of theirtowns and their landscapes. Beauty generateslasting benets, of which tourism is only the mostobvious.

The state of the public nances is not the onlychallenge: the spectre of climate change requiresequally urgent action. The objectives of the greenmovement are relevant here: it is argued that lessresource-intensive lifestyles are possible if we learnto live within our means and our resources, takingmore time over ordinary tasks, mending, touchingand feeling our surroundings. Beauty, likewise, does

not depend on things being new. It is cultivatedthrough a deeper understanding of what we alreadyhave, and by looking after and appreciating theunique characteristics of the places where we live.So, like W R Lethaby, we should commit ourselvesto living better on less.

Perhaps the

key thing is

to have the

confidence

to say beauty

matters, and

not to be

afraid of the

reaction.


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About the author

Alan Powers teaches at the University ofGreenwich, where he is Professor of Architectureand Cultural History. He is well known as a

writer on a wide variety of topics concerned withtwentieth century British visual culture. His booksinclude Britain in the series Modern Architecturesin History(Reaktion, 2007). He has also curateda number of exhibitions. He has been active inarchitectural conservation over many years with theTwentieth Century Society (including the periodin which it was known at The Thirties Society). Asa commentator and columnist, he has contributedfrequently to the Spectator, Building Design,Architects Journal, TLSand other magazines.

Have we become less certain

over time of what beauty means

to us, to the extent that we are

now reluctant to discuss it at

all? Alan Powers tracks the

development of the concept

of beauty in Britain and asks

where we went wrong and how

beauty could answer some ofthe most pressing questions for

our society today.

People Places Alan Powers

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