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n 1919, FM Simpson resigned his professorship at what was becoming known as The Bartlett School of Architecture following Herbert Henry Bartlett’s donation to build a purpose-designed home for UCL’s architecture school and his permission, granted in 1919, for his name to be used. The initial beneficiary of this munificence, and of Simpson’s legacy, was his successor Albert Richardson (1880-1964) who would remain in post until 1946. Though some remembered Richardson with affection and enjoyed his lectures, this would be a period when The Bartlett retreated from the forefront of architectural education, a trend that continued under Richardson’s successor Hector Corfiato. Not until 1960 would The Bartlett again take the lead in architectural education. The syllabus was essentially the same under Richardson and Corfiato. Students took classes in geometry and mathematics, perspective drawing and sciagraphy (the study of shadows cast by architectural forms), engineering and a number of other subjects, including lectures on the history and theory of architecture, which were taught by Corfiato himself. Both his students and the outside world moved on around the stationary Corfiato. By the mid-1950s the modernisers on the RIBA’s board of education had replaced their Beaux-Arts predecessors. But it was students of The Bartlett as much as unsatisfied RIBA visitors who generated the impetus for change. Their frustrations found a means of expression in Outlet, a student-led journal clearly influenced by New Brutalist aesthetics and containing articles on subjects such as Scandinavian Modernism, the work of Richard Neutra and state housing in Britain. From this period The Bartlett produced graduates who transcended their Beaux-Arts education to produce significant works of Modernist architecture, such as John Darbourne who, with his partner Geoffrey Darke designed the Lillington Gardens estate in Pimlico and Keith Ingham, architect of Preston bus station. In 1958, the same year as the game-changing RIBA conference in Oxford, four outspoken students – Tony Monk, Mike Sutcliffe, Tony Hyland and Mike Macrae – sent a letter to the Board of Architectural Education, appealing for an investigation into the state of teaching at The Bartlett. This move was leaked to the Architects’ Journal and the students were brought before the provost of UCL, accused of devaluing The Bartlett’s name. A subsequent review by the RIBA’s Visiting Board was, however, unfavourable, and there was no way of ignoring the appetite for change. The Bartlett needed a radical modernising agent – and so began its third radical contribution to architecture education. The chosen agent was Lord Llewelyn-Davies, a pivotal figure in the Oxford Conference who, in 1960, replaced Corfiato as professor. One of his early appointments was Robert Maxwell, a longstanding and popular design and theory teacher, who characterised Llewelyn-Davies’ task as ‘to initiate a revolution in the name of science and common sense’. Llewelyn-Davies was drawn to architecture after studying engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the
(Previous page, top) Albert Edward Richardson in 1955 (previous page, bottom) final year students in the Atelier, c1959 (Above) Buckminster Fuller (in flat cap) visits The Bartlett, 1962
1930s where, like his father, he had been a member of the ‘Apostles’, a secret society that brought him into association with Soviet spies Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. After obtaining a certificate in architecture from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Llewelyn-Davies joined the diploma course at the Architectural Association, where he became an influential figure, situating himself at the centre of a tussle for power between Beaux-Arts teaching and a modern, planning-led programme. Llewelyn-Davies’ inaugural lecture on 10 November 1960 was a crushing dismissal of The Bartlett’s Beaux-Arts heritage and an uncompromising manifesto for a new programme of teaching at UCL. He criticised the narrow, private world of 19th-century architectural training in Britain, which he blamed for creating a deep division between art and science in the curriculum. He invoked the figure of the ‘Renaissance Man’ and sought a return to the architect trained in a wide variety of disciplines, but including modern subjects like the physics, psychology and physiology of the human environment. The practical problems of heating, lighting and acoustics were introduced early on in the architect’s training as essential,