MARS Group

Last updated

The Modern Architectural Research Group, or MARS Group, was a British architectural think tank founded in 1933 by several prominent architects and architectural critics of the time involved in the British modernist movement. 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.[ citation needed ]

Contents

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 architectural group Tecton, by Ove Arup and by John Betjeman, a poet and contributor to Architectural Review . In 1936, Tecton members William Tatton Brown, his wife Aileen and the proprietor of Architectural Press, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, formed a three-strong 'Town Planning Committee' within CIAM exploring ideas related to 'linear cities'; Tatton Brown subsequently presented a paper based on the work, The Theory of Contacts and its Application to the Future of London, at the CIAM V Congress in Paris in September 1937. [1] However, this work was subsequently regarded as a "a preliminary survey of London by a section of the MARS Group", and a new and larger Town Planning Committee was convened under Arthur Korn's leadership in December 1937 to produce what turned out to be a heavily revised plan for London. [1]

The group's greatest success came in 1938 with a show at the New Burlington Galleries, but it also 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. [2] 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. [3]

The MARS Plan for London

"The plan for London issued by the Mars Group (the English wing of CIAM) and prepared by their Town Planning Committee was a marked contrast to anything that had gone before and, anything produced subsequently. It was frankly Utopian and Socialistic in concept." Dennis Sharp, 1971. [4]

The plan was devised by what has been described as a 'small and devoted' group, under the town planning sub committee of MARS, chaired by Korn, and including Arthur Ling, Maxwell Fry, the latter who worked as secretary, and fellow Jewish emigre, engineer Felix Samuely. [5] Arthur Korn is described as having been 'the main spring of the enterprise' and as providing an 'infectious enthusiasm' that drove the project forward. [5] [6] Influenced by the Soviet urbanist Miliutin, the plan essentially conceived the centre of the city remaining much the same but with a series of linear forms or tongues extending from the Thames, described as like a herring bone, composed of social units and based around the rail network. [4] [7] Habitation in each social unit was to consist mainly of flats and owed much to Le Corbusier's notion of the unite d'habitation. [7] Described as 'unworkable' by Dennis Sharp, in his 1971 essay on the plan, he concedes it 'was not a concrete scheme but a concept that would by its very nature produce interpretations'. [4] Marmaras and Sutcliffe argue the plan 'saw London almost entirely in terms of movement ...[being] presented primarily as a centre of exchange and communications'. [8] Moughtin and Shirley (1995) note that one of the aims of the plan was to promote public transport, where with railways integral to planning, the 'need for cars will be few'. [7] [9]

Korn's initial chairmanship of the plan was interrupted by his 18-month internment in the Isle of Man from 1939, being a German citizen, during which period work on the plan fizzled out. [5] On his release, in 1941, work recommenced, an exhibition of the plan was organised and a 'description and analysis' was published under the joint authorship of Arthur Korn and Felix Samuely in the Architectural Association journal in 1942. [5] [8]

Related Research Articles

<i>Congrès Internationaux dArchitecture Moderne</i> Modern architecture movement organization

The Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), or International Congresses of Modern Architecture, was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged across Europe by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern Movement focusing in all the main domains of architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denys Lasdun</span> English architect

Sir Denys Louis Lasdun, CH, CBE, RA was an eminent English architect, the son of Nathan Lasdun (1879–1920) and Julie. Probably his best known work is the Royal National Theatre, on London's South Bank of the Thames, which is a Grade II* listed building and one of the most notable examples of Brutalist design in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wells Coates</span> Canadian architect (1895–1958)

Wells Wintemute Coates was an architect, designer and writer. He was, for most of his life, an expatriate Canadian who is best known for his work in England, the most notable of which is the Modernist block of flats known as the Isokon building in Hampstead, London.

Cedric Price FRIBA was an English architect and influential teacher and writer on architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berthold Lubetkin</span> Georgian-British architect

Berthold Romanovich Lubetkin was a Georgian-British architect who pioneered modernist design in Britain in the 1930s. His work includes the Highpoint housing complex, the Penguin Pool at London Zoo, Finsbury Health Centre and Spa Green Estate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ove Arup</span> English engineer (1895–1988)

Sir Ove Nyquist Arup, CBE, MICE, MIStructE, FCIOB was an English engineer who founded Arup Group Limited, a multinational corporation that offers engineering, design, planning, project management, and consulting services for building systems. Ove Arup is considered to be among the foremost architectural structural engineers of his time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Athens Charter</span> 1933 urban planning document

The Athens Charter was a 1933 document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the early 1930s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxwell Fry</span> English architect, writer and painter

Edwin Maxwell Fry, CBE, RA, FRIBA, FRTPI, known as Maxwell Fry, was an English modernist architect, writer and painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dennis Sharp</span>

Dennis Sharp was a British architect, professor, curator, historian, author and editor. His obituary in The Guardian stated that he 'was well-known as an architectural historian, teacher and active defender of the environment. However, his reputation in those fields rather overshadowed his considerable success as a working architect and his long-term commitment to environmentally friendly building'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amyas Connell</span> New Zealand architect (1901–1980)

Amyas Douglas Connell was a highly influential New Zealand architect of the mid-twentieth century. He achieved early and conspicuous success as a student, winning the British Prix de Rome in Architecture in 1926. Having been impressed by the work of Le Corbusier at the 1925 Paris Exhibition and that of fellow French Modernists André Lurçat and Robert Mallet-Stevens, Connell effectively launched the Modernist architectural style in Great Britain.

Felix James Samuely was a structural engineer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OSA Group</span>

The OSA Group was an architectural association in the Soviet Union, which was active from 1925 to 1930 and considered the first group of constructivist architects. It published the journal SA. It published material by Soviet and overseas contributors. However this led to them being attacked as a 'Western' group and some individuals as being 'bourgeois'. After the closure of the group, their modernist approach to architecture and town planning was eliminated in the Soviet Union by 1934, in favour of social realism.

Philip Morton Shand, known as P. Morton Shand, was a British journalist, architecture critic, wine and food writer, entrepreneur and pomologist. He was the paternal grandfather of Queen Camilla.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Herman De Koninck</span> Belgian architect and designer

Louis Herman De Koninck was a Belgian architect and designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Drew</span> English modernist architect and town planner

Dame Jane Drew, was an English modernist architect and town planner. She qualified at the Architectural Association School in London, and prior to World War II became one of the leading exponents of the Modern Movement in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Korn (architect)</span> German architect (1891–1978)

Arthur Korn was a German architect and urban planner who was a proponent of modernism in Germany and the UK.

Hubert de Cronin Hastings, often referred to in contemporary works as H. de C. Hastings, was chairman of the Architectural Press and editor of Architectural Review and Architects' Journal.

Town Planning Associates was a design firm in New York City, active between 1942 and 1959, which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, Josep Lluis Sert. The firm produced urban design and city planning in various new or existing South American cities including Bogotá, Chimbote in Peru, and Havana. Sert's master plan for Havana, Havana Plan Piloto, was notable for its integration of natural landscape into new urban and existing building schemes. Town Planning Associates made prominent use of patios and other aspects of Mediterranean architecture adapted to South and Central America. They employed modernist principles of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and the Athens Charter. The charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the SS Patris II bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference was documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend László Moholy-Nagy "Architects' Congress." The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, through Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, especially on the proposed modernization of Havana.

William Eden Tatton Brown was an English architect. From 1959, he was the first chief architect to the UK's Ministry of Health, taking charge of large-scale hospital building until the mid-1970s.

References

  1. 1 2 Gold, John R. (July 1995). "The MARS plans for London, 1933-1942: plurality and experimentation in the city plans of the early British Modern Movement". Town Planning Review. 66 (3): 243–267. Retrieved 2 March 2023.
  2. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/60598, accessed 27 Dec 2008. Charlotte Benton. 2004. 'Korn, Arthur (1891–1978)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  3. Simon (2021-11-29). "MARS (Modern Architectural Research Group) (1933 - 1957)". Encyclopedia of Design. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  4. 1 2 3 P. 167 in Sharp S. 1971. 'Concept and Interpretation The aims and principles of the MARS plan for London'. In Arthur Korn, Maxwell Fry, Dennis Sharp. 1971. The M.A.R.S. Plan for London. Perspecta, Vol. 13 (1971), pp. 163-173
  5. 1 2 3 4 Pp 165-6 in Fry E. M. 1971, ' The MARS Group plan of London in Arthur Korn, Maxwell Fry, Dennis Sharp. 1971. The M.A.R.S. Plan for London. Perspecta, Vol. 13 (1971), pp. 163-173
  6. P.88 in Gold J. R. 2000. 'Towards the functional city? MARS, CIAM and the London plans 1933-42. In Thomas Deckker, The Modern City Revisited. Oxford: Taylor and Francis.
  7. 1 2 3 p122 in Moughtin J.C. and Shirley P. 1995. Urban Design: Green Dimensions. Oxford: Architectural Press.
  8. 1 2 Pp. 434-40 in Marmaras E. and Sutcliffe A. 1994. Planning for post-war London: the three independent plans, 1942-3. InPlanning Perspectives, 9, (1994) 431-453.
  9. A. Korn and F.J. Samuely, A master plan for London, Architectural Review, 91, January (1942). 143–150.