The Diverse Modes of Architectural History

Murray Fraser

Prof Murray Fraser is the Chair of Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. To inaugurate our new website he offers his thoughts on ‘The Diverse Modes of Architectural History.’ This text forms the basis of a presentation intended for this year’s Architectural History Workshop, aimed at graduate students and early career scholars, which was postponed due to pandemic.

It might seem inappropriate to write in an upbeat vein at such a terrible point in Britain’s history, and of that of the world, yet perhaps it is precisely at this kind of moment when it is most useful to look backwards and also to think about what might lie ahead. In my role as the new Chair of the SAHGB, I had been pencilled in to speak to the 2020 Architectural History Workshop on 21 March, but for obvious reasons that event was cancelled. This blogpost will instead give a summary of what I was going to say.

The workshop was fittingly aimed at younger SAHGB members, such as those currently studying for PhDs or working as early career professionals in academia, architectural practices and conservation bodies. With this in mind my intention had been to describe the ways in which I have looked at the study of architectural history during my career. If this can offer helpful insights for the younger generation, then I would have done my job.

First of all, I should point out that I trained both as an architect and architectural historian. As such, I have always seen the two as inseparably and symbiotically linked. Oftentimes I have been asked whether I prefer teaching design studio or architectural history & theory, yet I have always refused to give an answer. It would be as if choosing between one’s own children. Both are supremely important.

My passion for architectural history as contributing to a longer and deeper understanding of present-day conditions, while also being supportive of new creative ideas and forms, has undoubtedly shaped what I chose to research and write about. Studying at the Bartlett School of Architecture in the late-1970s and early-80s, I remember being keenly aware of the deep social divisions of that period: the ongoing IRA bombing campaign, the Thatcher government’s attack on trade unions, the initial stirrings of neoliberal economic policies, and so on.

As one of the first cohort of the new MSc in History of Modern Architecture, as founded in 1981 by Adrian Forty and Mark Swenarton at the Bartlett, I realised that I had found my intellectual home. Intrigued by post-colonial theory, my Masters thesis examined the political forces behind the astonishing transformation of late-18th century Georgian Dublin under British colonial rule. To my immense delight, this essay was picked by John Newman for the 1985 volume of Architectural History. It was my first publication. 

Next, my doctorate looked at early state housing policy in Ireland from the 1880s until independence in 1922. I was able to show that the two cornerstones of 20th-century social housing – central subsidy from state finances and standardised design plans – were in fact developed first as part of British policy in Ireland, well before being transferred to Britain through the 1919 Addison Housing Act. My growing interest in cross-cultural flows, albeit this time some that affected Britain rather than it being the fount, led on to my next book, Architecture and the ‘Special Relationship’, published in 2007. In the book I traced the multivalent influences of America on post-war British architecture and urbanism, as enacted by figures as diverse as Reyner Banham, Cedric Price, John Winter and Norman Foster.

But what I also wished to stress to the SAHGB Workshop was the benefits of adopting a diverse approach to architectural history, not merely in regard to subject matter, but also in terms of methods and techniques. Between 2006–10 I was co-leader for a mammoth research project while working at the University of Westminster to create an online archive of the famous 1960s/70s architectural group, Archigram. Altogether we managed to catalogue around 14,000 items of their drawings, models, photos, films and ephemera as a research resource that scholars anywhere in the world can freely access.

I regard my latest major project – General Editor for the 21st Edition of what we retitled as Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture – as being similarly diverse. I had never thought I would be involved in writing or compiling a major global survey, especially one as canonical in its day as Banister Fletcher. Truth to tell, I was rather sceptical about even taking on the role because of the book’s image as a product of old-fashioned British colonialism. Yet the more I thought about the project, the more I realised that especially in this age of ubiquitous and excellent scholarship in architectural history, the more we need an up-to-date intellectual framework, spanning globally, of how and where our individual scholarly contributions fit it.

Hence I was able to throw myself into the Banister Fletcher project, aided by an excellent managing editor called Catherine Gregg who did most of the trickiest work. Under the guidance of the Banister Fletcher Trust, we decided to rewrite Banister Fletcher completely and to transform its ethos by making three major changes. Firstly, in order to overcome the Western bias in previous editions we adopted an organising system that covered all countries/regions using the same neutral spatial pattern in each of the seven key time periods we had identified, thereby giving a lot more space and credence to non-Western architecture; secondly, we diluted the tendentious over-reliance on the classic Banister Fletcher drawings, using them only whenever necessary they were suitably informative and accurate, and instead also bringing in a far wider spectrum of drawings and photographs to enhance the visual material; and thirdly, we decided to have each of the chapters written by a leading expert in that particular subject area, writing under their own name, thereby rejecting the previous policy in Banister Fletcher of creating a falsely unitary voice for the entire text.

The outcome is undoubtedly substantial: 1 million words in two volumes containing 102 chapters written by 88 experts. I myself wrote one chapter entirely and also co-authored two other chapters, as well as penning all of the introductions to the book’s sub-sections. The book represents the most comprehensive and in-depth survey of global architecture produced to date, but it is not intended in any sense to negate the myriad contributions that architectural historians are making around the world. Rather, the hope is to offer an overarching outline and useful framework for the subject we value so much.

My current research project is very different still, in that I am working with a small team to try to design affordable housing in London that is of better quality than what is presently being provided. Yet even here much of my interest, and a good part of the resulting output, is derived from my involvement in researching into housing history over the past few decades. Architectural history can only gain strength from intellectual diversity and wider applicability. It is something that I would urge to all younger scholars and enthusiasts whether they are members of SAHGB or otherwise.