Colonizing Modernism

We're flying together aboard a Short Kent S17 Flying Boat to visit the MARS, the Modern Architectural Research Group Exhibition. Before we land in London, let's use our flying time to view the big picture of our enterprise, which is going to look at two apparently very different processes, the British Empire, on the one hand and the Modern Movement in Architecture. So let's see that wider perspective from our airliner focusing on just four images. One. Using architecture and architectural engineering to illustrate "Colonial Progress". The second one showing resettlement housing in Kowloon, in the colony of Hong Kong. The last colony to get its independence by the way and in many ways a sort of hugely exaggerated and over-compressed version of Modernist zoned functionalist housing ideas. Then, thirdly, a photograph of the model of the community centre in Accra, built by the United Africa Company. Nowadays it's Unilever. But a very significant part of the British colonization of Africa. And we've gone to Accra because Accra was then in the colony of the Gold Coast. The first British colony to gain independence, in 1957, as Ghana. And there's one more. Our image is of the British High Commission at Lagos in Nigeria in West Africa. But look at that Modernist façade with above it a massive great version of the Royal Arms. It gives you a sense, doesn't it? Of what's happening in terms of the interchange between two very different systems. To me, Modernity is very much what the British Empire was. The exploitation of technology... Of new ideas and systems... to sustain the established social and political and cultural regime. The new overlaid with old imagery. That's the Empire. What about the Modern Movement? Well, it had a radical commitment to representing the new technologies the new ideas, the new systems and of course changing society to something much more newly democratic. Now we're landing in London. Now let's go to Bond Street to visit the MARS (Modern Architecture Research) Group Exhibition, opened in the Burlington Galleries, near the "Heart of the Empire", as it used to be called, in January 1938. So here we are within the Exhibition. Well, what's the purpose of doing this? We're going to use the spatial and thematic organization of the MARS Exhibition to explore the ideas, the themes, the attitudes of the Modern Movement and its appropriation by late British Imperial policy. If you go and look at the catalogue we'll see that the catalog for the MARS exhibition was mostly adverts. You'll see the effect of Abstract Art from the Cubists onwards and above all the sense of a new beginning. But then again the motto for the Exhibition, taking us way back into English history, a quote from Sir Henry Wotton describing what should be the qualities of architecture. The MARS Group transformed the Burlington Galleries even more than the recent exhibition of the Surrealists. There's a link to that for you. MARS was trying to get to grips with the problem of the City. They wanted to make it efficient and effective and more equitable. What we're going to show you is all the publicity, not only supporting Imperial policy and Colonial presence but also the introduction of new ideas about architecture in a very interesting journal, the "Crown Colonist". It later became the "New Commonwealth". When we get into the Exhibition they'll be links too. Sort of like a big journal opening out in front of you. You can go and read through an article that Le Corbusier wrote after he'd opened the Exhibition. He was a member of the "C. I. A. M.", the "International Congress for the Promotion of Modern Architecture". He published a series of very important articles and a number of books, the most famous of which, "Towards a New Architecture went around the world, literally, and began an important change. The illustration comes from a book by F. R. S. Yorke, "The Modern House", which he wrote in 1934. A Short Kent S17 Flying Boat. It's part of Imperial Airways. The air view and air power, they were the outcome of the First World War. But for Le Corbusier... Le Corbusier published a book called "Aircraft". It was a whole new means of analyzing social needs and conditions and how to proceed with good, more democratic, community planning. Do you know? I think almost the main change in popular thinking was that we became a lot more aware of the sham of facades and uniforms and all that kind of display, and by the way, some of you will have heard William Walton's piece of music called "Facade". So the MARS rooms are really a sequenced spectacle of what could be and we'll see that resonating using the lens of "Crown Colonist", "New Commonwealth" and other journalism.