Commemorating and celebrating Raymond Unwin (1863–1940)
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02665433.2014.956783
ISSN1466-4518
Autores Tópico(s)Urbanization and City Planning
ResumoAbstractThe 150th anniversary of Raymond Unwin's birth in 1863 provided an opportunity for reviewing his contributions to town planning and housing in their international context. His socialist values derived from John Ruskin, William Morris and Edward Carpenter provided the basis for democratizing design, aided by the visualization of his ideals provided initially by Barry Parker, his partner in architectural practice from 1896 to 1914. Evolution of housing design themes and space standards enabled demonstration of their efficacy in the context of his master plans for Garden City communities. The influence spread through his tract, ‘Nothing Gained by Overcrowding’, and the 1919 Housing Act, which required Garden City standards for public housing, administered by Unwin in the Ministry of Health. During the 1920s, he initiated a transatlantic dialogue with planners and housing officials in the USA, where he died in 1940.Keywords: Raymond UnwinGarden Citiestown planningarchitecturehousing typologyspace standardsdensitypolicydemocratizing design‘Nothing Gained by Overcrowding’public housing Notes on contributorMervyn Miller is an architect, town planner and historian. In 1974, as Principal Conservation Officer for North Hertfordshire District Council, he initiated the conservation of Letchworth Garden City, and extended his studies to embrace the lives and influence of Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin as pioneers of planning. He received his Doctorate (supervised by Gordon Cherry) from Birmingham University in 1981, since when he has combined an intensive career in conservation of the historic environment with presenting numerous papers at IPHS and SACRPH conferences and writing six books on Garden City themes. Dr Miller is also a Trustee of The Lutyens Trust and Life President of Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust.Notes1. In summarizing my paper, I am focusing on Unwin's early life and career, which shaped the values he applied through his plans and written work.2. Stein, Toward New Towns for America, 24, 26, 73, 206.3. Feiss, “Unwin's American Journeys.”4. Walter Creese held a Fulbright Research Scholarship at Liverpool University in the 1950s and made the acquaintance of Barry Parker's widow Mabel, who shared the material available at 296 Norton Way South, Letchworth, with him. His appreciation of the work of Parker and Unwin deepened over the next decade and she read and commented on the draft chapters for his major book, Creese, Search for Environment. This was followed up by Legacy of Raymond Unwin, a selection of papers. Together, these formed the foundation of mid-twentieth century scholarship on Parker and Unwin.5. Mabel Parker's invaluable typescript, ‘Material available for a memoir of R. B. Parker at 296 Norton Way South, Letchworth’ (‘notes compiled in response to a request from Lewis Mumford’), was assembled over a number of years, probably mainly during the 1960s, and included family trees of the Parker and Unwin families who were already linked by marriage when Raymond Unwin married Ethel Parker in 1893. These notes and the collected drawings of the Parker and Unwin practice (Buxton, Baldock and Letchworth offices) are held by the Parker Collection, International Garden City Exhibition (First Garden City Heritage Museum), Letchworth Garden City.6. Published as Miller, Raymond Unwin.7. Rodger, Transatlantic Crossings.8. Miller, Raymond Unwin, 1–2, quoting “Howard Medal Presentation,” 44–7.9. Unwin, “The Royal Gold Medal Presentation,” 581–7.10. Rowbotham, Edward Carpenter, 81–2.11. Miller, Raymond Unwin, 12–14.12. Ibid., 16–19. Personal letters covering the crucial period 1885–1891 were in the personal collection of Mrs Joan Hitchcock Rich, Raymond Unwin's granddaughter, Grassy Hill, Connecticut, at the time of writing. The diary, recording Unwin's frustration at lack of personal contact with Ethel Parker, is in the Unwin Collection, Rylands Library, University of Manchester.13. Ibid., 19–23. Valuable personal information on Unwin's housing work for the Staveley Company was provided by Unwin's cousin, Christie Booth (1893–1982), in conversation with the author at her home in Ashover, Derbyshire, 1976–1981.14. Ibid., 23–4.15. RU to Ethel Parker, 9 August 1891, Hitchcock Rich Collection.16. Ibid., 24–5. See also Pickard, Parish Church of Saint Andrew.17. Peggy Unwin, note to the author (n-d) commenting on the Hitchcock (Rich) letters, 1978.18. Carpenter, “Simplification of Life,” 95–120.19. From the mid-1890s to the early 1900s, Barry Parker provided the imagery for Unwin's aspiration to design reformed working-class housing. ‘An Artizan's Living Room’ was drawn in 1895, and first published to illustrate ‘Our Homes’, Building News 10: 26 July; it also appeared in a privately printed brochure of the same title (Buxton: n-d, c. 1895), receiving wider circulation as Plate 12 in Parker and Unwin, 1901 (see note 20). The original drawing is in the Parker Collection, International Garden City Exhibition (First Garden City Heritage Museum), Letchworth Garden City.20. Parker and Unwin, Art of Building a Home, 133.21. Miller, Raymond Unwin, 31, 37–40. The Parker Collection holds a copy of the Catalogue of the 1903 Northern Artworkers' Guild Exhibition and photographs of a model exhibited. “Cottages near a Town” was also offprinted as a separate leaflet, printed by Chorlton and Knowles' Mayfair Press, also printers of Art of Building a Home.22. Miller, Raymond Unwin, 31 and 40–5; 71–5; 91–7.23. The term ‘Design Continuum' was coined by the author for a paper given at The Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, May 1997: see Miller, “Art of Building a Home,” 180–93; ‘Concerning the Coming Revolution in Domestic Architecture’, Daily Mail 18 September 1901. This was embellished by illustrations showing ‘An Artizan's Living Room’, Unwin's projected design for his own home at Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, and a sketch for a country house in Lakeland, embellished with price tags of £200, £500 and £10,000.24. Unwin, “On the Building of Houses in the Garden City,” 69–74 (Facsimile reprint in Unwin 2014, 43–54).25. Unwin, Cottage Plans and Common Sense (Facsimile reprint in Unwin 2014, 57–69).26. Ibid., 11 (Facsimile reprint in Unwin 2014, 67).27. Unwin, Town Planning in Practice.28. Ibid., Ill.169, 231, Ill. 232, 314, text 299–308.29. Unwin, “Introduction,” ix–xiii; Unwin, “Town Extension Plan,” 31–62.30. Unwin, Nothing Gained by Overcrowding! (Facsimile reprint in Unwin 2014, 75–98); Diagram VII, 19 (Facsimile reprint 93).31. Miller, Raymond Unwin, 166–70.32. Ibid., 171–82, 199–209.33. Ibid., 235–6.34. Parker, “Life and Work,” 161–2. Parker also wrote a “Memoir of Sir Raymond Unwin,” 209–10.35. Hughes, Letters of Lewis Mumford, 404–5.36. Sir Frederic Osborn emphasized this point at meetings with the author in the late 1970s. He expanded on the concept (without specifically using the term) in a letter to Lewis Mumford, 31 August 1966, quoted above.
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