A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Connell, Ward & Lucas: towards a complex critique
The practice of Connell, Ward & Lucas, active in Britain in the 1930s, produced a number of concrete houses which conventionally have been regarded as worthy but flawed attempts to implement European Modernist principles, especially those associated with Le Corbusier. Connell and Ward were New Zealanders, and it has also been assumed that they came to Britain in order to acquire cultural and technological understanding previously unavailable to them. However, this paper argues that such assumptions are unsound. Their work, even after they were joined by their third partner Lucas, was not exclusively Corbusian and it was infused with advanced technological and aesthetic principles which, in the case of Connell and Ward, were substantially absorbed before they came to Europe. It is also argued here that the work of the practice in the late 1930s became fundamentally fractured as tensions between discriminating and ideological uses of Corbusian principles became irreconcilable. Other critics have seen this as evidence of inconsistency, but here it is regarded as a questioning and informed admission of Modernist principles into practice - and therefore as a badge of integrity - which may only be evaluated by means of an inclusive and complex critique.
Connell, Ward & Lucas: towards a complex critique
The practice of Connell, Ward & Lucas, active in Britain in the 1930s, produced a number of concrete houses which conventionally have been regarded as worthy but flawed attempts to implement European Modernist principles, especially those associated with Le Corbusier. Connell and Ward were New Zealanders, and it has also been assumed that they came to Britain in order to acquire cultural and technological understanding previously unavailable to them. However, this paper argues that such assumptions are unsound. Their work, even after they were joined by their third partner Lucas, was not exclusively Corbusian and it was infused with advanced technological and aesthetic principles which, in the case of Connell and Ward, were substantially absorbed before they came to Europe. It is also argued here that the work of the practice in the late 1930s became fundamentally fractured as tensions between discriminating and ideological uses of Corbusian principles became irreconcilable. Other critics have seen this as evidence of inconsistency, but here it is regarded as a questioning and informed admission of Modernist principles into practice - and therefore as a badge of integrity - which may only be evaluated by means of an inclusive and complex critique.
Connell, Ward & Lucas: towards a complex critique
Thistlewood, David (author) / Heeley, Edward (author)
The Journal of Architecture ; 2 ; 83-102
1997-01-01
20 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
Unknown
Connell, Ward and Lucas: towards a complex critique
| Online Contents | 1997
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