In Our Time - Architecture and Power

Episode Date: October 31, 2002

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role which architecture has played in our public life throughout history, whether in homage to an individual or as a monument to an institution or ideology, has always been a potent symbol of wealth, status and power. From castles to cathedrals, from the pyramids to Canary Wharf, architecture has always served to glorify in some way the animating ideal of the time. Why is architecture such a powerful form of expression? Have architects concerned themselves mainly with the masses, or restricted their designs to the demands and aspirations of the elite? What can a country's buildings tell us about its ideas of its own past and present identity? With Adrian Tinniswood, Architectural historian; Gavin Stamp, Senior Lecturer, Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art; Gillian Darley, Architectural historian and biographer of John Soane.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In today's In Our Time, I'll be discussing the role which architecture has played in public life. Whether in homage to an individual or as a monument to an institution or ideology,

architecture has always been a potent symbol of wealth, status and power. from castles to cathedrals, from the pyramids to Canary Wharf, architecture has served to glorify and often exemplify in some way the animating ideal of the time. So why is architecture such a powerful form of expression? How much can buildings tell us about a country's idea of its past and its present identity? And what does the architectural history of London in particular reveal about our own country? With me to discuss this is Adrian Tyneswood, architectural historian,

and author of Visions of Power and his invention so fertile, our life of Christopher Wren. Gavin Stamp, senior lecturer at the McIntosh School of Architecture in the Glasgow School of Art, and Julian Daly, architectural historian and biographer of Sir John Sohn. Gavin Stam, why do you think that public architecture

is such a powerful form of expression? Because architecture can be big, and it lasts. Other things fade away, but dictators and emperors are built for centuries, if not millennes. So you think the reputation of architecture, the reason we're talking about it now, is basically because of the monumental aspect of it. Well, people look back and see the monuments of the past, and they want to emulate them as they last. Do you think that the impulse for this monumental building has been the same through different sorts of civilizations? No, well, I think it varies, obviously.

The medieval civilization produced great cathedrals, very curious buildings, the more one investigates them, rather different from the big personal statements that modern monarchs and dictators have put up. Do you find there was a collusion when you think about people in the past between the ruler and the architect that they consciously said to each other, we are going to be remembered, and so we will build this massive, great block of stuff? Oh, yes, I think all architects long to work for dictators. LeColbusier did for all his talk about democracy. He really wanted to work for Vichy France, so he could have big things going.

up. Architects love it. Hitler was the perfect client, or Chachescu. Yes, but before Hitler and Chachescu, if we go a little way back, say, through two or three thousand years, there were no architects, were there, so who were we talking about then? Oh, there must have been architects. People have always designed the building. There were people who built, but actually,

you know, but what this and I do, but the idea of an architect popping up and saying, I will do that, and I will work in collusion, didn't really work like that. Not with, like Nafton, for instance, I guess not with the people in earlier civilizations. There were builders, and there were rulers who made the buildings, So mine's just at the moment is more in the rulers and the architects.

We don't know the architect's names. There were always people who designed. There must have been buildings that don't appear. There used to be a myth that somehow happy craftsmen got together and ran up cathedrals. Those cathedrals were designed. We don't know their names except for the later Middle Ages. You're still staying in a rather late period for me. If we go back to Gnarton, for instance, Adrian Tynoswood,

the great Egyptian temples at Luxor, Karnak, and on which I think eventually the Roman temples were more, We'll start properly in Rome, but let's start there. Who is the architect there and then? And why is Acknartan building those sort of temples and his predecessors? Again, as Gavin says, we don't know. There are workmen. There are masons who double as surveyors, who do some design work,

and also who work with, I mean, Akan Atenarton worked closely with his craftsman, his clerks of works. I mean, a good example of the relationship between architect and client in ancient Rome, if you like, is Hadrian. When Hadrian set out some ideas for the Pantheon, he approached the architect Apollodorus and asked him what he thought, and Apollodorus said it was lousy, a lousy idea. So Hadrian had him killed and carried on, because you could do that when you were an emperor. Yeah, but we're still dodging around.

I mean, Gavin's replied the first question, architects always want to be remembered. It was true and so and so forth. But just to get back to it, the impulse I don't think comes from the architect's. I'm trying to get where it comes from. I don't think architects say, I will build Karnak, or I will rebuild Roman marble, or I will build Sharta. It's powerful people who do that. And do you think that they consciously are making these buildings, it's a final time I ask this question, consciously making these buildings in order that they are remembered in posterity.

Yes, yes. And equivocally, yes. So I don't, one doesn't necessarily agree with you. They're trying to worship something in the terms of religious people, aren't they? In Egyptian times, they're trying to show that they are the, Son of God, for instance, Sarklandartan. But you're assuming... But you're assuming...

But you're assuming that buildings have a single function. I mean, buildings can work on different layers. They can work on different levels. Shah Jahan when he built the Taj Mahal. You know, it was a mausoleum for his beloved montage mahal. It was also a huge personal statement about his own power. And it could be two... Could be both those things.

Okay, well, let's start with Rome then properly. Hadrian re-assembled Rome in a way. although he put his name and only one of the many buildings that he did, as I understand it. What were the defining architectural features of the Roman model, and why do you think it has been so pervasive ever since? Well, I mean, the defining features, I mean, if you want to go into classicism as such, I mean, if we want to talk about sort of columns and orders and porticoes, we can. I mean, I think the reason it's been so pervasive is that it was the original,

certainly in terms of Western civilization, which as far as our history is concerned, means, you know, is the big one. Roman architecture was ubiquitous. You could walk into a forum in Libya or Lebanon or you could walk into a circus in Britain or a temple in Portugal or anywhere around the Mediterranean basin and feel at home at the height of the Roman Empire

because the architecture unified. It made you part, you know, it made you part of the Roman Empire no matter where you were. So do you think that worked because Rome was powerful for several hundred years and because it was not so much the architecture as the power of the authority behind the architecture. Yeah, sure, because, I mean, Rome was one of the first civilizations to realize

that architecture could unify, that architecture could... You know, you've got an incredibly disparate group of peoples and races and nations under the Roman Aegis, and architecture brought them together in the same way that language did. So, I mean, if we were having this conversation about Latin, it would be, you know, nobody would raising any eyebrows, else, it would seem perfectly sensible that a language unifies a culture. And architecture is doing exactly the same thing in classical terms.

Of course they had a visual language, which was codified in books. The one that's come down to is Vitruvius, where the way you use the orders is clearly laid out. So that was a manual, and there must have been others, which could be used all over the Roman Empire. And there are rules. And because they were codified, as I can suggest because they were codified, you could reproduce them very easily, couldn't you? These reproduction reached way down into our own century, didn't it? It did. I mean, the codification that Gavin's just mentioned. I mean, you start with the Renaissance treatises,

and then you have a continuous replication and sort of a further enrichment of this classical language with a huge sort of baggage of what it all conveyed. And the whole idea of hierarchy, which becomes, you know, very sort of, once you get into academic training of architects and you get into an architectural profession so we could say roughly, as it were, from the middle of the 18th century onwards. But the idea of the mortality introduced by the Romans

was imitated by other, like say Spier was going to try to imitate it or exceeded, wasn't he? In Berlin he never succeeded in doing it in Capitol Hill, Cameron, Classic. Was that because the architecture itself was so attractive? Or was it because they wanted to be as powerful for as many hundred years as the Roman Empire had been? Well, obviously they were, yes, I mean, they were pulling on every associative sort of string they could get.

I mean, the best one really is Mussolini, who, you know, sort of sides his way through Rome, removing all the detritus of, you know, the sort of intervening period, to reveal Rome as the fascist city. And, I mean, that's the clearest one, really, of all, in our own century. The curious thing is, of course, he made Rome more Roman than it ever was. I mean, we all say that Napoleon, Louis XIV, Hitler, Chowchescu looked back to ancient Rome. But, of course, ancient Rome never had a great central axis, that boring long vista. You look at the great model of ancient Rome, several of them that are in Rome.

Of course, it's very complex, irregular spaces, irregular disposition of buildings. The straight line obsession is much more modern. I think it's Louis X-14th France. And Sixth and Sixth is the Fifth Rome as well, I think. I mean, the Christianisation of the classical ideal. I'll come back to Gillian Darlane for a minute. Do you think that when architecture represents political power, do you think there tends to be one look, one defining look about it?

No, I don't think so. I mean, you mentioned Capitol Hill. Well, that's the central point of L'Enfons plan. L'Enfons plan was, of course, based, I mean, sort of Versailles lay behind that. And there's a continuous sort of exchange and sort of modification of a vocabulary. It's a very wide vocabulary, and then it takes on the vernacular of the country, the nationality. It lends itself to actually sort of conveying nationalistic intentions. I mean, you can reinforce a sense of nationhood.

Establish a nation, as Christopher En said. And, you know, I mean, it's no accident that sort of in the 18th century they were busying about trying to make up a French order and a British order or Britannic order, you know, in order that they could actually sort of, you know, as it were, lift their leg on it in the doggie sense. Are we talking about conscious power? Are we talking about people saying we will use this in order to display, exercise, continue our power? I mean, you know, you can put three interpretations and will be the Conqueror's White Tower, for instance, which does all those things. Do you think that is that the driving force in monumental architecture throughout? Can I just say, I mean, in the 20th century, it very clearly is that, I mean, you have Chusef, who's standing.

Island's architect saying we are the direct heirs of Rome. You have Hitler, when he heard that the palace of the Soviets, was going to be bigger than his great hall in Berlin. Promptly invaded Moscow. Invaded Moscow and said that that'll put a stop to their building. I mean, he said that. That will put a stop to their building. I mean, that's fairly unequivocal, isn't it?

I mean, that's fairly sort of up front. The building matter to Stalin and to Hitler, and indeed to Mussolini. Is it once or twice it's been mentioned as already in this discussion? Lou the 14th, the Palace of Versailles. How important, Gavin's name, how important and influential was that? Because you referred to it two or three times. It is in many ways. Can we just talk in a little bit of detail about why that was important?

I think it was important because of course it represented power, the power of a powerful monarch in Europe at the time. I think it also represents so many of the ideals of the Enlightenment, with its interest in geometry, all those avenues and roads converging on the centre of the palace. That appealed, I think, to the 17th century mind, especially the geometrical side. Somehow the French were so much better at doing these things.

I mean, look at the Anvalid, you know, it appeared, you know, within a very, very short period of time, four or five years. You know, when we tried to, I mean, in this country, Greenwich was the emulation of the Anvalid, and it took decades, you know, just like the Channel Tunnel, really. Well, we'll come back to that in a very much. minute to do. There's a national and distinctive

and quite important reason for that, isn't it? Let's just talk about Versailles for a moment or two. Why did it become such an envied a template? Oh, it's massive, yes, that's one thing. It's enormously rich, that's another thing. A lot of gold. It's another thing. But it

was the layout, doesn't it? It was the idea that the centre of this great web was a person who could look down on through avenues and be as it were, control. Yeah, I mean, the baroque is about absolute power, isn't it? I mean, that's an expression of an architectural style.

It expresses absolutism because the apartments stretch out to either side of a central point. The grounds stretch out beyond that. They radiate out so that like the Sun King that Louis XIV the 14th was, the rays of his eminence and power spread out across the country. I do think it's wonderful when things go around and come around. We're talking about the Sun King, and I'm still in the back of my mouth. mine is like, Norton. You still got Akanaten there, haven't you?

He was the son of the king, and it doesn't have to keep going out, doesn't it? You've, we've turned to London once or twice, so let's look at it more, in more detail, because it is its own story. Adrian, after the fire of London, 66, Christopher Wren had a plan to redesign London along, as I understand it, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, classical Roman lines. First of all, how would it have looked if Wrenner got his way? Let me just correct their moment I mean Wren did indeed have a plan

But there were at least Eight eight plans for London Probably there were dozens and dozens of models for London I mean I'm sure everybody was doing it You know every sort of country squire was building an ideal city We can stick to Wren we might get somewhere So what were Wren's plan Wren's plan was to

produce a series of I mean Most people Most of those other models Just to go back to them very briefly most of those models were gridiron models. That was the easiest way to redesign a city on a gridiron. Wren adapted a gridiron and zoned the city.

Ren has a commercial district centered around the Royal Exchange. He has a cathedral of commerce in the exchange. He has a long vista through to a New St. Paul's Cathedral and further vistas down to the customs house and the Rift, the London Bridge. So you've got this sort of triangular arrangement. and you've got a series of districts. Why didn't it happen then, Gavin Stam?

Why didn't these plans materialise? Well, I think London had more sense. It was a rotten plan, a lot of straight lines. And that's the way people thought at the time. I think what's interesting is, of course, you did it in a couple of days, soon found out that the commercial interests in London were more important,

that people wanted their own plots back and wanted to rebuild as quickly as possible. And Wren put it in a draw, and never referred to it again because he was a sensible, pragmatic man. I think you maybe skipped over the real reason, but the real reason was that there were free-held property rights. I mean, you please correct me, free-held property rights,

a great number of them, which is one of the things which you referred to earlier, why we find ourselves out in a different case from Bucharest and Leningrad and Moscow and Paris. And people tenaciously held onto these, which made it difficult to run straight lines through them as housemen did in Paris. And that is one of the fascinating things about it, like it or not. And Charles II had said, you know, after the fire, and don't let any view down,

better words to that effect. That was the stumbling block rather than people saying it was a rotten plan. It wasn't a very good plan, but indeed people wanted to rebuild on their own plots immediately. They weren't going to give up their property rights. They weren't allowed to. They weren't allowed to. I mean, straight after the fire, there's a blanket ban on all building for six months. The problem also was that nobody knew what the property rights were. Nobody knew who owned what. And of course, the vast majority of property was talented, or it was let and sub-sub-sub-lat. So it was a legal nightmare. I mean, there was a point in September after the fire,

there was a point that there was a rumour going around that Charles II was going to buy London. He was going to buy up the whole darn city and let Wren do it. I mean, it was an absurd room, and it could never ever have happened. Exactly, the last thing in the world he could have done. Gavin obviously, and I come back in that moment, because it's fascinating, he obviously thinks the consequences of that were a good thing.

Do you, Julian, do you think the consequences were a good thing for London? I do, because, I mean, it was actually quite a sophisticated process took place. Once the plans have been put back in the draw, surveyors were appointed, and surveyors were appointed both by the city and by the king. So there were large, I mean, relatively large numbers of people with professional expertise, and this is in 1660s,

to carry out a huge, I mean, Hook, for instance, Robert Hook, you know, was a surveyor. And he's, I mean, somebody's calculated, I mean, thousand upon thousand of properties. He's surveyed by staking them out. I mean, which is a sort of, it does imply a certain respect for the individual's rights in the matter. And I think that's what sort of, that's what lingers out of all that story. Come back to you, Gavin.

What do you think, what benefits flowed then from the abandonment of the plan? There were small benefits, but London wasn't quite rebuilt as it was. But I think it is, as Gillian suggests, it's respect for the individual. London has always resisted the grand gesture. In the 18th century, though you had new estates being laid out on gridiron plans, the estates owned by different aristocratic landlords don't quite correspond. In the 19th century, you don't have the Alstman-like boulevards. The metropolitan border works pushed through some pretty ugly streets,

but they bend they're pragmatic. Even the great John Nash... So bending is pragmatic and the straight line is not pragmatic. I think that's a programme. I think we have to pass it now, but I actually think that's a programme, right? But the great John Nash, I think is the one great town planner that England's produced. Again, compromised. He fitted Regents Street carefully between fashionable Mayfair and sleazy Soho and made it go round Lord Foley's property, which is why I've got

all souls laying in place just round the corner from here in broadcasting house, a kink, and then other picturesque effect. I bet the BBC would love you for saying, yeah. You live in a kink. It was a pragmatic bend. And again, the quadrant round to Piccally Circus. It's all, it's not the great straight line, not the French method, which of course is laying a ruler. down on a map, drawing two straight lines and demolishing everything in between. There's a hell of knock about going on here, I'd be the feeling. I mean, that is the method of urban planners everywhere, isn't it, if one looks in New York or Philadelphia. You know, the urban planner loves the straight lines.

But the relationship between London and Paris, which has been this kind of love affair, which started in the 17th century, and I mean, you can, Evelyn, Wren, too, go to Paris, and, I mean, they are blown away by what an architect can. do with power behind him. And the thing goes on and on. It goes, the minute that Napoleon turns his attention to Paris, you have Nash and Sone, green with envy, Sown in particular, because all his, just about all his grand plans,

well, never got beyond paper, because he didn't even have a royal patron. I mean, Prince of Wales wasn't very interested in Sown. He was much more, I mean, Nash was much more fun. But in London at the time, let's say, after the rest of the time, let's say after the restoration, let's drift on a bit and be easy with centuries, as we can be on probably like this. If we're talking about power and architecture,

would it be right to suggest that power was demonstrating itself mostly through the private building of great and grand houses inside London? Well, that was certainly one place that you could find the sort of embodiment of power, whether you talk about the great houses looking at a green park or, I mean, there's the sort of extraordinary story of Clarendon's house, which in a slightly disingenuous way he just said, well, I needed a house. I haven't got anywhere to live, so I built myself a house.

And Mr. Pratt, who was conversant with what you had to do, not, I hadn't built very much, built him a fine house. In 18 years, it had gone. And Clarendon, too. So, I mean, that's about the clues. I'm getting to where I'd like to get to, so maybe what I'd like to get to is completely irrelevant to this conversation than if I plug away.

It seems to me, it seems to me that it seems to me that it's complimentary to what Gavin was saying that one of the big, that the demonstration of power

was through extremely rich people of which we had many more because of industrial revolution and they showed, one of the ways they showed that, but it was not only the country, everybody knows

we've got lots and lots of country houses, but they were building great houses in the city and this was an important development. Whether it was unique of that, we can talk about, but there's an important develop.

If I'm right, we can talk on a bit. If not, we'll move on to something else. There's one point worth making that they weren't building them in the city at all, really, that most of the great houses were being built in the western suburbs towards Whitehall, towards the centre of government. In the new town, outside the city, not specifically the city,

I'll give you that. Within the city, you've got a lot more sort of powerful corporate building. You've got the city, you know, the company halls that are being rebuilt after the fire. You've got the Royal Exchange. You've got Guildhall. And these are civic. But they don't seem to me to be expressions of power so much, really. They were at the time. They were at the time.

You think so? I'm sure. I'm sure they were. The Guildhall on expression of power? Certainly, yeah. Yeah, no question. As indeed was the Royal Exchange. I mean, the poem was written about the new Royal Exchange when it's opened in the 1670s. This wonderful... It was a cathedral of commerce.

Gavin, what do you think about these houses? I'm getting a bit of a bore about these houses. I promise to the last question. You're quite right. London, up until the early 20th century, had great private palace. as did Rome, as did Prague, as did Vienna. What's interesting in a way is sad is that they've almost all disappeared, and we just have a few left, like Spencer House and Lancaster House.

But most have gone because commerce rules London and most of the great aristocratic owners of these houses sold up between the walls, when a huge number of them came down to be replaced by rather banal commercial blocks of flat. Commerce triumphs over other things. The blocks of flats always have to be banal and commercial going on. The ones when you look at what are.

only look at what was on the site of Chesterfield House or Dorchester House, and they're pretty wrong. I'm a feeling that a lot of our listeners live in France. It's not wrong with Blitz. But if 5.1 and 2, Gavin, where do we stand on my point? It's all right. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I haven't got time to come around and lynch you. The great townhouse of the great Lord Chesterfield, I was it, wasn't it?

If they had to come down, it did in about 1930, and I'd like to think it'd be replaced by a good building by a good architect. And that's the sad thing about the departure of all those great private palaces. But isn't it about the departure of all their owners as well? I mean, this is what's happening, that the social structure moves on, and architecture is about people. It's not about buildings. It's always about people. Just almost a digression here, the architecture of the Industrial Revolution,

that's all seemed to me to be in this country, perhaps in other countries and I know, to be extremely interesting, a mixture. of utility and real attempts to buy into classical models and other models. What would your view of that? Well, I mean, that is a fascinating sort of episode, and it's a very short episode, when the first wave of industrialists are trying to, in a sense, infiltrate. And I mean, the one that applies to London, of course, is the Albion Mills, which were built with Samuel White designed and probably, well, definitely had a financial interest.

was a builder developer just like, of course, Nash was. Huge mill with all the classical features, rusticated base, pediments and so on, standing not that far off from Somerset House on the other side of the river. So you had sort of, you had the government offices, the learning societies and so on, facing the new world of industry with everything that that building stood for, which was, you know, unbelievable productivity. possibly the loss of working men's livelihoods. So it was a sort of grandiose, a very difficult topic to argue, if you want.

And then, of course, it goes up in flames shortly after, which solves everybody's problem, and then the word goes out on the street that has been burned down by exactly those people who were losing their livelihood. But in fact, what it was was they were overrunning the machinery because the machinery wasn't properly tested. It was built on what. And the actual enterprise was in terrible,

actual difficulties. So they were overrunning machines in order to kind of catch up and all the investors were sort of waiting around. And so the machine blew up. But the stations and the king, all of this building around Kings Cross were again, if we're talking about London, just coming to the end of a London section,

brought the industrial architecture into this city and I don't mean it in its limited city mayor of London in his carriage with his wince Adrian. I mean this brought it into this city with very interesting consequences. I mean the most evident outstanding now, of course, some of the railway stations, I think.

Sorry, just when you're saying it brought the industry into the city, I mean, in fact, there was plenty of industry in the city before the railways. I mean, you know, John Evelyn was very big on... I know that, but I'm trying out of the smoke. Keeping the dires and the soap boilers. Absolutely, absolutely fine.

I'm talking about industrial architecture, then. I think it brought massive architecture into the city in a way that it hadn't been there before. So I... It's only brought straight lines in, to go back. to that one, I mean, there's a limit to how... The largest buildings was industrial buildings, which people went to see, because it was so amazing,

it was the London docks, huge structures that you've got, the best ones of the early 19th century down the river. Certainly that's unprecedented scale. That's what I'm talking about, bringing it in after the Industrial Revolution, bringing massive architecture, which represented not a different sort of authority,

it represented so much of the authority's power. We're talking about the power of commerce here, murder entire power, which came into the city, London. But the bit of a classical dress, which in a sense ties it into the architecture, you know, that the clients were familiar with. I mean, that's what their houses.

They were dressed that way. I mean, you know, it's... Sure, and as indeed the railway stations maybe had a classical or a Gothic dress, as did the railway trains themselves. You know, they had classical columns on steam engines and Gothic arcading. Of course, there was less of a division between the architect and the engineer. There were so many individuals. the prime example is Brunel,

there are lots of others, who could do both very well, and the way you've built an industrial building was with the language of classicism stripped down arches and columns, columns perhaps of cast iron. We ended the authoritarian section by talking, or attempting to talk a bit about Versailles.

Can we just talk about why the House of Parliament rebuilt in 1835 were rebuilt in that particular way, and that got that got anything to volunteer on that? Well, Parliament knew exactly what it wanted. It wanted a building that represented the history of the parliamentary institution. It was a new way of looking at architecture, not just using the conventional classical language. Had the House of Parliament burnt down in 1800, I think we would have had a classical new Parliament by Sohn, probably, or Smirk or somebody. But by the 1830s, such was the influence, say, of the novels of Walter Scott and the sense of history and the Gothic revival getting going,

that the building, the centre of the nation, had to represent the nation's history. And so Parliament said that the style shall be Gothic or Elizabethan, so different from the way we've organised parliaments these days when, of course, I'd say the Scottish Parliament had no say whatever in the building was going to get, but with the rebuilding of Westminster, the House of Commons.

So that's very interesting. So you think that Parliament is telling the country of what it knows the country wants, and it's representing this country through that building. Can you just go a bit further? What do you think it was representing through that? I mean, you've said Walter Scott and all that. That isn't quite enough for me.

What else is it represented? Well, they knew. I mean, people, there's all part of the idea that, of course, institutions in Britain, in England, in particular, evolve. And Parliament had sat in a royal palace and eventually taken over that royal palace. And, of course, the proper name for the building that Barry and Pugian built is the new palace of Westminster. And it represents the constitution, which has evolved over the... Does it not also...

Just a second. When it was built, did people say, yep, that's what we want? Was it a whoopee feeling? There was a debate about it in Parliament, but the general feeling, my impression, is that people were very happy with a great Gothic building. The face was changing. The other point to make, I think, is that just as classical is a set of values,

so is Gothic by this point. That, you know, that Gothic architecture in the 19th century has Christian associations, whereas classical is pagan. Gothic is considered to be native English architecture, even though it's not, it's considered to be native English architecture. Because of the...

Yes, exactly. And classical is foreign. So in an imperialistic religious age, Gothic becomes a much more appropriate. And also, we're starting to look to England's past as a more congenial place to live, if you like. That with the French Revolution, with the Industrial Revolution,

with the politicised working class, with demonstrations, you're starting to find people looking back to the past, looking back to England's past and saying, I'd rather be there than here. It has to be said there was a funny little sort of earlier episode. I mean, just about 10 years before the Great Fire,

Soam started out building the law courts, which were, in fact, on the side of Westminster Hall, and a select committee of the House of Commons got him to actually demolish what he'd built, which was classical, and start again with something that they saw as Gothic, not as Gothic, of course, as Pugian managed to bury, but still something. which was, you know, pointy.

To harmonise with Westminster Hall. Yes. Also, in 1835, we're said to represent this country. It was set to represent its past, as you said, or subter... It's interesting that William IV tried to give Buckingham Palace to Parliament. Get rid of it. Because he hated it. He hated it so much. And he said to the speakers, they walked through the smoking ruins.

He said, I mean, this is a permanent gift, mind. A permanent gift. But they wouldn't have it. Let's move finally in the final section to architecture and modernism, maybe even architecture and democracy. Gavin Samp, do you think there is an association with an architecture and democracy? Not in terms of style. Absolutely not. There is a view which still prevails somehow classicism represents authority, and the modern architecture represents democracy.

I don't think that is true. They're just different styles, and it's a matter of how these styles are used. In the early days, modernism was seen somehow representing a more, possibly a socialist, certainly a more egalitarian society. But in the end, it has been imposed on people with quite as much ruthlessness as classical architecture. But I would agree with that, actually, but in its intentions, it did intend, and Le Cubsio is easy to deride. And they did intend to make the buildings more available for more people for the masses, as John Carey puts it in his excellent book, collections of the masses than ever before. And I think it's worth talking

about that impulse before we dismiss it. That is true, and I think it's best expressed in the festival hall, which I think is one of the finest buildings of its time, representing the ideals of the modern movement. The idea of openness, accessibility, an architecture of the people

without any of the overtones of monarchs of the past. An irony is that the great Italian modernist, Gusebi Terangi, designed the Casa del Fascio in Como as a fascist building for Mussolini, one of the masterpieces of the international modern movement. He talked about this building being of glass to express the open nature of fascism. So there are always words can be used to justify it.

It's also about your enemies, I think. I mean, the fact that Nazi Germany was so vehemently opposed to modernism gave it a certain credibility. I mean, Leubertkin says in 1940, I think, talking about Nazi Germany, he said a flat roof is an act of revolt. A horizontal window invites a call from the secret police. Would you say that modernism has as yet

has achievements in any way comparable with those we've been touching on as we've raced through the last 2,000 years? Julian. Well, I mean, it's very difficult to talk about modernism in sort of a rigid way because if you're looking at buildings that are being built now, We're talking about buildings which are sort of not anymore, I'm glad to say,

sort of eclectic mud pies of this that and the other in the way they were 15 years ago. But there is a very strong, clear kind of purposeful architecture, which tends to be used for a lot of the new cultural buildings, a lot of the new lottery-funded buildings, not necessarily the ones that have gone up in huge lights, have borrowed a great deal from the central tenets of modernism, but we're not. So people know what you're talking about specifically? Well, I mean, Walsall Art Gallery is a good example of a really,

I mean, a first-class building beautifully built, expensively built, thoughtfully designed. I mean, you couldn't call it anything else but modernist in its essentials, but it's not what we think of, if you think of sort of modernism as a sort of East German youth hostel, you know, they're from the other ends of the world. On the other hand, in loose and general towns, when people were talking about a very modern city, they'd probably say, look at Manhattan. And when you look at Manhattan, what you want to look at are there's skyscrapers, these great canyons of skyscrapers down 7,000, you're in the Wall Street and so forth.

Are we not back to power and authority as represented by monumentality and so on, except we've got it, we're worshipping, mamun is in charge and not, the sun disk or God. Sure. I mean, you know, you're not talking about democracy there. You're talking about, you know, about globalization, about, you know, about the conquest of capitalism, I think, which has given right to some wonderful buildings. I mean, I don't mean to dismiss it, it's given right to some wonderful buildings. I mean, to my mind, you know, the skyscraper is the 20th century's great architectural achievement.

But there isn't an irony here, isn't there? We'd be talking about how Wrens London, that Wrenn's plan was defeated by, in a way, by commerce. And commerce was more important than authoritarian rule. by the monarch, but now in the end commerce has triumphed. And of course what upset so many people looking at London that we no longer have that sense of propriety, that monuments in the city, secular, you know, the dynasty or above all the church should dominate,

and everybody is rightly upset that the Dome of St Paul's is now overwhelmed by the Towers of Commerce and it tells us a great deal about what we now regard as most important. I think another... Well, also tell us that it might do, Gavin, but it also might tell us that there's a faculty that we have, perhaps, perhaps overdeveloped in this country, perhaps as same as other countries, is that age gives to things not only an added beauty, but a sense of inviolability.

Yes, I think it should probably. I think also the dome of St. Paul's is the most beautiful dome of any... I mean, there is a kind of aesthetic, isn't it? I mean, there's an aesthetic standard. But things never mind the being always. You can't go around raising higgledy-piggledies of London 10 minutes, 15 minutes ago, Gavin, and then saying higgledy-piggledy gets in the way of the best dome in the world, you know. I'm saying it, there is an irony there, I said.

and it's, I'm not quite sure what the answer is. Noel Kerrard said the bigger the buildings, the lower the morals. I think one of the great ironies of... Well, I don't think Noel Card was particularly right, I see, was it? Do you think the morals are lower in Manhattan than they were in, I don't know, in Rome? I wouldn't presume to say... Well, you're here to talk about these sort of things. But isn't the irony that we go to Berlin to see the Reichstag

triumphantly rebuilt in a very symbolic way by Norman Foster? And then we come back to London and we see the... mayoral office, which is a sort of, I mean, it's a pimple with kind of, some of what you might call kind of the main elements of the Reichstag. The office of Mayor Livingston. I mean that. I mean the egg over the water, but everything reduced to sort of caricature proportions. So when you actually walk into the building and start the journey up, which in Germany is,

it's a really wonderful journey because you go over in a symbolic way, you go. above the seat of government. In the building here, you get to second floor and you can't go any further. And there's no explanation as to why and this transparent building turns out to be, in fact, completely and utterly solid. We could draw quite a lot from that, couldn't you?

I'm not going to comment. Of course, we could look at Paris again, as we keep to have really the London looks at Paris, because Paris is scarcely a backward city today, but they have not found it necessary, except in one or two places, to lose the skyline. Paris has disciplined itself for the best communal reasons. I mean, London has compared to most Western cities, isn't it? I mean, London's have a lot more higher-rise discipline, if you like.

But now it's all being freed up, perhaps because of the unnatural power being exercised by certain architects over this government. Yes, we started by, or I disputed the fact that, very opening remark you made, The reason why the monumentality and the continuation of architecture was so fascinating was because you said architects always wanted to remember. And I thought, no, it's mostly rulers and power people want to be remembered. But now it is architects, isn't it? I mean, you don't get a building, you get a Norman Foster. You get a Richard Rogers, and so it goes. So am I right?

And what's your view on that, Kevin? Norman Foster and Richard Rogers exercise, I think, an unhealthy degree of power. I cannot think of any architect in British history, who quite a very important. powerful as those two now. Why is it unhealthy? Well, I think it's aesthetically unhealthy because it means that other firms, younger firms, more interesting firms, don't get the work. And I find something very sinister about the foster office

with its 600 desks, 600 staff, churning out these buildings, and even Lutyens and Wren, the height of their power, never had such... Why is it sinister? Because the idea of modern buildings being sinister is around, as a thought, why is this sinister? Why is 600 people more sinister? than 60 people or six people.

I think it's a great design machine producing a lot of... Well, if the design is a problem. Think of the design machines that, I mean, Seafut is the company, you know, we knew of, but there were hundreds in their sort of post-war period, you know, the Trier and Norman Prestons

of this world, who nobody ever kind of went to their offices, nobody wrote up their buildings, and they just rose inexorably all over the country and all over London. Sorry, finish you, Lou. I just feel that, I mean, I think, you know, large, huge organisations become atrophied, you know, full stop. I mean, that's just a fact of life. But 15 years or so ago, people were saying, why, you know, why is it the Norman Foster Builds buildings overseas?

Why are the Norman Foster buildings in this city? And why did Richard Rogers, you know, first build in Paris? We wanted them then. and... The architectural lobby wanted them. A number of journalists wanted them. So where is an architect... Are we going to finish this programme

by saying that what we've reached is the state which Gavin Stamp had us start from, that it's all in the hands of the architect. It is architect-dominated, and that's the position in which we find ourselves, for better or worse, depending on whether you like the Norman Foster. Ervra, or you don't? What do you think?

Just round the table, Eddie, what do you think? I mean, I think we're in danger of forgetting that most architectures, is an exquisitely ephemeral thing, and it comes and it goes. Most, yeah, a lot of what we're seeing. Most, yeah, a lot of what we're seeing. And I do agree with what Gavin says, but a lot of the buildings we're seeing will be gone in 50 years,

and there'll be new styles, there'll be new preoccupations and new sets of values. So I don't think we need to worry too much. I think we can afford to be sort of smuggly complacent about it. Oh, dear. Right, Gavin. Well, I suppose that's reassuring if the architecture of steel and glass lasts less long than the architecture of stone and brick, does seem to be the case.

So perhaps I won't live long enough to see all the towers by Foster coming down. What a wonderful thought that would be. Okay, Gavin. What about you, June? Any advance on these two? Well, I just feel that, you know, patronage is the key to it all. And where does the patronage come from? And there's a different kind of patronage at the moment.

There's probably greater involvement in the quality of London and, you know, Britain as a whole. There's a slightly more refined view of what is quality than there was, certainly when I started writing about buildings, in the sense of, because we've had this enormous lottery-funded explosion, and all over the country people are seeing very decent buildings and sometimes really exceptional buildings rising in front of them. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to all three of you. Next week we'll be discussing human nature with Stephen Pinker, John Gray,

and Janet Radkechichiches, but thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.uk forward slash radio 4.