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MARS at the design museum
Design Museum, London. 20 January—20 April 2003
A 1930s dream of what the future should be is housed in what
might be described as a collector's cabinet in the Design Museum,
London. Titled The MARS Group, it recalls a time when leading modernist
architects, thinkers and writers joined together to consider how
planning and architecture should shape the future. They included
Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Serge Chermayeff (who later influenced
the American theorist, Christopher Alexander), Ove Arup, Hugh Casson,
László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Read, JM Richards and
John Betjeman. After the Second World War, they were joined by Misha
Black and Lionel Brett (among others). MARS stands for Modern Architecture
Research that was set up in 1933 following Sigfried Gidieon's request
that Morton Shand, a leading architect critic, organise a British
group to take part in events organised by CIAM (the Congres International
d'Architecture Moderne).
Pride of place in the collector's cabinet is taken by documentation
relating to the exhibition MARS held in the New Burlington Galleries,
London in 1938. The exhibition was divided into Sir Henry Wootton's
three ‘conditions of well-building' - ‘commoditie, firmeness
and delight’, and included an outdoor room where "house and
garden coalesce". There were also sections devoted to 'the community,'
'the family' and 'the individual,' all supported by plans and photographs.
The need for effective transport and town planning was introduced
by William Tatton Brown and Maxwell Fry. Also included was the circular-shaped
and bakelite-housed wireless designed by Wells Coates for EK Cole
and toys designed for Abbott by Erno Goldfinger. The exhibition's
catalogue had a cover by Edward McKnight Kauffer, then best known
for his posters for London Underground. The introduction was by
George Bernard Shaw.
Despite the popularity of the exhibition, which was visited by
7,000 people during its two weeks' run, modern architecture in Britain
was limited to a relatively few buildings. Most were private houses
although there were a few public commissions. Their architects included
Fry & Gropius (who designed the Village College at Impington),
Mendelsohn & Chermayeff (who designed the De La Warr Pavilion
in Bexhill-on-Sea), Lubetkin & Tecton (Highpoint in London),
Connell, Ward & Lucas, Joseph Emberton (Simpsons of Piccadilly,
London), Francis Yorke and Raymond McGrath. It was not much but
it was a start. It was a dream that was to shape the Festival of
Britain of 1951 before being replaced by ideas advocated by Le Corbusier
(who thought the exhibition ‘a charming demonstration of youth…
[showing] the lyrical appeal of those poems in steel, glass and
concrete’).
But, following the Festival, a new generation of architects considered
the MARS Group reactionary so that lack of support led to its closure
in 1957. And by then, some of its leading members (among them Gropius,
Breuer, Mendelsohn and Chermayeff) had become well established in
the US. One wonders what the reputation of MARS might have been
had they been encouraged to stay in England before the Second World
War.
The MARS Group exhibition continues until 20 April 2003.
Richard Carr
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