Architecture and Planning: The Functional Approach
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 1955
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith lecturer is Dr Nikolaus Pevsner, the German-born British scholar of history of art and architecture, and author of the county guide series, The Buildings of England (1951–74). In this series, Pevsner explores the qualities of art which he regards as particularly English, as illustrated in the works of several English artists, and what they say about the English national character.
In his final lecture, Dr Pevsner examines the particular aspects of Englishness which he believes are prevalent today, and what, by their means, England might achieve for her own benefit, and perhaps, that of other nations. He explores how England's towns and centres have been planned, and argues that traditional English planning theory takes into account the historical, social and aesthetic aspects of a site, as well as its pure geography.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.7 | This lecture in the series The Englishness of English Art, given by Nicholas Pevsner, was originally broadcast in 1955. |
| 0:15.5 | We present the seventh and last of the BBC Reith Lectures, given by Dr. Nicholas Pefner on the |
| 0:23.6 | Englishness of English art. Dr. Peffsner has entitled this final lecture, The Genius of the Place. |
| 0:32.6 | You would have asked yourselves more than once in the course of these lectures, and you have a right to ask |
| 0:39.2 | me at the beginning of this last of the series, what is the good of all this? Where does it lead to? |
| 0:47.1 | I have presented to you a number of qualities and shown where they appear in English art, |
| 0:53.3 | and occasionally also in other fields of English life. |
| 0:57.0 | I hope, I have convinced you, that they are English, |
| 1:01.0 | and in what way they are English. |
| 1:04.0 | But so many of them seem to contradict each other. |
| 1:07.0 | What does it add up to them? |
| 1:10.0 | My answer is, very briefly, much too briefly, this. |
| 1:16.7 | First of all, you must expect polarities, as I warned you at the very outset. National character, |
| 1:24.8 | much more than individual character, is bound to be composed of seeming contradictions. |
| 1:31.8 | I have analysed in some detail those between decorated and perpendicular. |
| 1:38.0 | But you may now ask why decorated appeared when it did, and why perpendicular appeared when it did? |
| 1:47.0 | It's not too difficult to give one sort of answer to this question. |
| 1:53.0 | Overriding all national differences, each period and each phase in the whole of European or Western history of the last thousand years |
| 2:03.2 | has its own spirit. That spirit in each country calls up certain national qualities at any |
| 2:11.6 | given moment and has no use for others. Therefore, decorated in 1300 and perpendicular in 1400 to 1500 are the |
| 2:22.9 | specifically English expressions of European situations. But I trust you will grant me that in |
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