NEW ARCHITECTURE
An Exhibition of the Elements of Modern Architecture Organised by the MARS Group
George Bernard Shaw [foreword], Ashley Havinden [Designer]
George Bernard Shaw [foreword], Ashley Havinden [Designer]: NEW ARCHITECTURE [An Exhibition of the Elements of Modern Architecture Organised by the MARS Group]. London: New Burlington Galleries, January 1938. Long 8vo. Printed wrappers. 55 pp. Fully illustrated with black and white plates and line art. Loosely inserted list of exhibits, comprising photographs and models with credits. Wrappers foxed and creased. Remnants of vintage sellotape repair to spine. A very good copy of this rare and ephemeral catalog.
11 x 7.5 exhibition catalog divided into 26 pages of exhibition material and 29 pages of period advertisements. Includes work by Wells Coates, Frederick Gibberd, Eric Mendelsohn, Serge Chermayeff, Robert Mailllert, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Maxwell Fry, Berthold Lubetkin, Tecton, and Connell Ward & Lucas.
The MARS [Modern Architectural Research] Group presented their exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in January 1938 as a direct response to the Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Architecture in England exhibition from the previous year.
In Modern Architecture in England [1937], Henry Russell Hitchcock, Jr. wrote: "The International Exhibition of Modern Architecture held at the Museum of Modern Art five years ago consisted in the main of buildings in France, Holland, Germany and America, England was barely represented.
“Today, it is not altogether an exaggeration to say that England leads the world in modern architectural activity Modern architecture had won a foothold in England as in America before the depression began, but the newer English architecture of the late twenties reflected chiefly a European half-modernism already past its prime.
“International Style” is peculiarly descriptive of the current English architecture scene. To London, even before the depression showed signs of lifting, Lubetkin came, drawn from Paris where construction had all but ceased. Later Gropius, Mendelsohn, Breuer and Kaufmann, to mention but the best known, came from Germany after the revolution of 1933 cut off in its prime the largest and most materially successful school of modern architecture in the world. Lescaze, from America was also active in England from 1931 on. Yet, for all its international personnel, the English school of architecture must not be considered an alien phenomenon. It is artificial and misleading to make a sharp distinction between the current work of the foreign-born architects and that of men like Connell, Ward and Lucas, or Wells Coates, who themselves owe their architectural principles ultimately to the Continent. The English school of modern architecture may therefore be fairly considered as a coherent entity. . . .
“Since English Modern Architecture has developed in a period of economic recovery, the types of building which the architects have been asked to provide have rarely been of advanced sociological interest. Middle-class houses and apartments, large stores, recreational structures, casinos, cinemas, zoos, schools and factories, rather than low-cost housing, have been demanded. Since the practice of modern architecture is concentrated in London, its patrons have been chiefly metropolitan but not mainly of foreign origin. While it would be absurd to say that the predominant conservatism of English taste had been basically modified, the public support of modern building seems assured. The British public has proved effectively open-minded in patronizing modern architecture. One might now hope that the general esthetic forces of the nation may soon be educated and mustered for a solid front. Then the good work of the past would still receive its due—which it does not always today—and the good work of the present would be supported against blatant revivalism, sickly traditionalism, and pseudo-modernism.
“The work of the English contemporary school in the last few years, still so evidently expanding and improving, sets a mark which we will not easily pass in America. It sets that mark, moreover, under cultural conditions more like our own than those of most other countries of the world. We can understand what the obstacles have been in the way of these men, what temptations to compromise, what general distrust, what whimsical building regulations, what indifference to earlier national steps toward modern architecture they have had to overcome. The psychology of recovery is generally conservative rather than experimental, and in a world of rising nationalistic prejudice England's hospitality not only to Continental ideas but to foreign architects has been amazing One can end a consideration of English architecture in the winter of 1937 not merely with the conclusion that its present achievement is almost unique and could hardly have been foretold even five years ago. One can also prognosticate that this achievement very probably represents the opening stage in an architectural development of prime creative significance."
The MARS Group chose direct engagement with the public as their strategy and the New Burlington Galleries as their battlefield. They organized the installation thematically in small vignetttes about the family, the community and the natural landscape. Large photographic enlargements and bold graphics instructed the visitors about Modern architecture and how it could respond to the changing needs of everyday life. Furnished interiors showed the Modern home environment. The MARS Group installation was closer in comparison to the earlier public affairs and educational exhibitions, such as America Can’t Have Housing [1934].
The Modern Architectural Research Group, or MARS Group, was founded in 1933 by Wells Coates, Maxwell Fry, Morton Shand and other architects and critics to promote modernism in British Architecture, in the same way that Unit One was created to foster modernism across the arts. F.R.S. Yorke was the secretary and founding members included Lubetkin and John Betjeman. The MARS Group came after several previous but unsuccessful attempts at creating an organization to support modernist architects in Britain such as those that had been formed on continental Europe, like the Union des Artistes Modernes in France.
The group first formed when Sigfried Giedion of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne asked Morton Shand to assemble a group that would represent Britain at their events. Shand, along with Wells Coates, chose Maxwell Fry and F. R. S. Yorke as the founding members. They were also joined by a few members of Tecton, another architectural group, by Ove Arup and by John Betjeman, a poet and contributor to Architectural Review. The group's greatest success came in 1938 with a show at the New Burlington Galleries, but it also unfortunately left them in debt. The MARS group proposed a radical plan for the redevelopment of postwar London, the details of which were published the Architectural Review in 1942. At its height there were about 58 members in the group.The group itself began to lose steam along with the movement and many members left as a result of creative differences. The group finally disbanded in 1957.
Ashley Havinden (United Kingdom, 1903 – 1973) joined the staff of the advertising agency W.S. Crawford at the age of nineteen, and he remained there for the whole of his career, becoming their Art Director in 1929 and eventually Vice-Chairman of the company. He encouraged Crawford to employ Edward McKnight Kauffer. Influenced by Stanley Morison and Jan Tschichold, Havinden designed a font for Monotype in 1930 known as ‘Ashley Crawford.’ Later he immortalized his own handwriting in the font ‘Ashley Script’ (1955).
Havinden had attended evening classes at the Central School of Arts & Crafts and in 1933 he received further lessons in drawing from the sculptor Henry Moore and became friends with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash and other pioneers of the Modern Movement. The London Gallery held his first solo exhibition in 1937 and two years later he was one of the nine British artists whose work was featured in an Exhibition of Abstract Paintings held at the Lefevre Gallery, London.
His continuously impressive and distinctive output of ideas, dynamic layouts and finished work (usually signed ‘Ashley’) was characterised in advertisements he created for many important clients including Martini, Yardley and Gillette. A poster for the Milk Marketing Board was much admired by Walter Gropius, during a visit to London in 1934. Havinden created a house style for Simpson of Piccadilly, Liberty’s store in Regent Street and KLM airlines. Alistair Morton RDI commissioned textile designs from Havinden for Morton Sundour Fabrics. His modernist paintings adapted easily to furnishing fabric and rugs, as well as dress fabrics for the House of Worth. He was a member of the Display Committee for the British Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition, designed the catalogue for the 1938 Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS exhibition). Havinden also designed the Men’s Wear section, and sat on the selection panel for Men’s Clothes, Cloths and Accessories for Britain Can Make It in 1946. Havinden was also instrumental in bringing the first exhibition of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) to London in 1956 (subsequently elected their President d’Honneur).
At the outbreak of the Second World War Havinden enrolled in the Highgate Home Guard Battalion and designed posters for the ARP and War Loan advertisements for the Ministry of Information. He then joined the army camouflage section. On his promotion to Captain in 1943 he was transferred to the Petroleum Warfare Department to work on ‘Pluto’, the petrol pipeline project to the Normandy beaches.
Havinden did much to foster education for design and its professional standards. He was a founder member, and later President, of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, President of the Creative Circle and the Double Crown Club, twice Chairman of the London College of Printing, Governor of Chelsea College of Arts and Governor of the Central School of Arts & Crafts. In 1961 Manchester Regional College of Art awarded Havinden an Honorary Doctorate of Arts. He also wrote Line Drawing for Reproduction (1933) and he published Advertising and the Artist (1956). For his services to industrial design Havinden received the OBE in 1951.
John Gloag wrote an appreciation of ‘one of the most distinguished pioneers of industrial design’ for The Times. He wrote that Havinden ‘will long be remembered…for the inspiring encouragement he gave to innumerable young artists and designers, for he was a great impresario of talent and took infinite trouble to find or make opportunities for designers of promise.’ [xlist_2018]