Quality of architecture
Sir: I am surprised that you should publish a review which seems to me to be the written equivalent of the irrational cry of 'Fascist' so often used against powerful conservative arguments. In her review of David Watkin's Architecture and Morality (31 December), Helen Smith dismisses a book which, as she limpidly explains, 'deals with one major overt primary theme which loosely couches the author's dominant reactionary diatribe.' Throughout her article, easy pejoratives are employed while no serious attempt is made to answer Dr Watkin's serious and illuminating observations about the use of philosophical and determinist arguments to justify the exclusive use of particular architectural styles. To quote one favourable reference to Lutyens in a volume of the Buildings of England does not atone for the shameful belittling of this great architect in the standard histories of modern architecture by Pevsner and others, a belittling of English architectural tradition which has been counterbalanced by the promotion of approved architects who have used the right style for the inevitable modern collectivist society.
Your correspondent regards Dr Watkin's examination of Pevsner's Pioneers of the Modern Movement as redundant, but a criticism of this book is necessary as it is still in print and is very much responsible for the preconceptions about twentieth century architecture and the immorality of 'historicist' styles which one so often finds as deeply embedded in the minds of students as, apparently, in that of Miss Smith. Not content with dismissive generalisations, your reviewer even stoops to suggesting that it is culpable to publish the book now when the principal subject (whose age is oddly overestimated) — Sir Nikolaus Pevsner — is very ill, when she is presumably aware that much time must elapse between writing and publishing.
Architecture and Morality is a late but, neverthless, welcome and courageous criticism of accepted architectural theory and history which has had such evident pernicious results since 1945; Watkin's serious, cogent — and witty — arguments deserve mature consideration and comment.
Gavin Stamp 2 St Alphege House, Pocock Street, London SE1
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