1.
Listed building
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A listed building or listed structure, in the United Kingdom, is one that has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The statutory bodies maintaining the list are Historic England in England, Cadw in Wales, Historic Scotland in Scotland, however, the preferred term in Ireland is protected structure. In England and Wales, an amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Owners of listed buildings are, in circumstances, compelled to repair and maintain them. When alterations are permitted, or when listed buildings are repaired or maintained, slightly different systems operate in each area of the United Kingdom, though the basic principles of the listing remain the same. It was the damage to caused by German bombing during World War II that prompted the first listing of buildings that were deemed to be of particular architectural merit. The listings were used as a means of determining whether a building should be rebuilt if it was damaged by bombing. Listing was first introduced into Northern Ireland under the Planning Order 1972, the listing process has since developed slightly differently in each part of the UK. In the UK, the process of protecting the historic environment is called ‘designation’. A heritage asset is a part of the environment that is valued because of its historic. Only some of these are judged to be important enough to have legal protection through designation. However, buildings that are not formally listed but still judged as being of heritage interest are still regarded as being a consideration in the planning process. Almost anything can be listed – it does not have to be a building, Buildings and structures of special historic interest come in a wide variety of forms and types, ranging from telephone boxes and road signs, to castles. Historic England has created twenty broad categories of structures, and published selection guides for each one to aid with assessing buildings and these include historical overviews and describe the special considerations for listing each category. Both Historic Scotland and Cadw produce guidance for owners, in England, to have a building considered for listing or delisting, the process is to apply to the secretary of state, this can be done by submitting an application form online to Historic England. The applicant does not need to be the owner of the building to apply for it to be listed, full information including application form guidance notes are on the Historic England website. Historic England assesses buildings put forward for listing or delisting and provides advice to the Secretary of State on the architectural, the Secretary of State, who may seek additional advice from others, then decides whether or not to list or delist the building. In England and Wales the authority for listing is granted to the Secretary of State by the Planning Act 1990, Listed buildings in danger of decay are listed on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register
2.
Bexhill-on-Sea
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Bexhill-on-Sea is a seaside town situated in the county of East Sussex in South East England. The first reference to Bexhill, or Bexelei as it was called, was in a charter granted by King Offa of Mercia in 772 AD. It is recorded that King Offa had defeated the men of Hastings in 771 AD, at this time, the term Hastings would have referred to this whole area rather than the town itself as it does today. In the charter, King Offa established a church and religious community in Bexhill, norman Conquest of 1066 it appears that Bexhill was largely destroyed. The Domesday survey of 1086 records that the manor was worth £20 before the conquest, was waste in 1066 and was worth £18 10s in 1086. King William I used the lands he had conquered to reward his knights and gave Bexhill manor to Robert, Count of Eu, with most of the Hastings area. Roberts grandson, John, Count of Eu, gave back the manor to the bishops of Chichester in 1148 and it is probable that the first manor house was built by the bishops at this time. The later manor house, the ruins of which can still be seen at the Manor Gardens in Bexhill Old Town, was built about 1250, probably on the instructions of St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester. The Manor House was the easternmost residence owned by the bishops, there were often disputes between the Bishops of Chichester and the Abbots of Battle Abbey, usually about land ownership in this area. In 1276 a large portion of Bexhill was made into a park for hunting, in 1561 Queen Elizabeth I took possession of Bexhill Manor and three years later she gave it to Sir Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset. The Earls, later Dukes, of Dorset owned Bexhill until the mid 19th century and their main residences were Buckhurst Place in Sussex and Knole House in Kent. In 1804 soldiers of the Kings German Legion were stationed in barracks at Bexhill and these troops were Hanoverians who had escaped when their country was overrun by Napoleons French Army. As King George III was also the Elector of Hanover, he welcomed them, at about this time, defensive Martello Towers were built along the south east coast, some near Bexhill, in order to repel any French invasion. In 1814 the soldiers of the Kings German Legion left Bexhill, the German troops had been here to protect Bexhill from the French. However, many of the people were actively trading with the enemy by way of smuggling. The best known of the smugglers were in the Little Common Gang. In 1813 Elizabeth Sackville had married the 5th Earl De La Warr, and it was the 7th Earl De La Warr who decided to transform the small rural village of Bexhill into an exclusive seaside resort. He contracted the builder, John Webb, to construct the first sea wall, Webb, in part payment for his work, was given all the land extending from Sea Road to the Polegrove, south of the railway line
3.
East Sussex
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East Sussex /ˈsʌsᵻks/ is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent to the north and east, Surrey to the north west and West Sussex to the west, archaeological remains are plentiful, especially in the upland areas. The areas position on the coast has also meant that there were invaders, including the Romans. Earlier industries have included fishing, iron-making, and the trade, all of which have declined. Sussex is traditionally sub-divided into six rapes, from the 12th century the three eastern rapes together and the three western rapes together had separate quarter sessions, with the county town of the three eastern rapes being Lewes. This situation was formalised by Parliament in 1865, and the two parts were made into administrative counties, each with distinct elected county councils in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, in East Sussex there were also three self-administered county boroughs, Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. In 1974 East Sussex was made a non-metropolitan and ceremonial county, at the same time the western boundary was altered, so that the Mid Sussex region was transferred to the county of West Sussex. In 1997, Brighton and Hove became a unitary authority, it was granted city status in 2000. East Sussex is divided into five local government districts, three are larger, rural, districts are, Lewes, Wealden, and Rother. Eastbourne and Hastings are mainly urban areas, the rural districts are further subdivided into civil parishes. To the north lie parallel valleys and ridges, the highest of which is the Weald itself, the sandstones and clays meet the sea at Hastings, the Downs, at Beachy Head. East Sussex, like most counties by the south coast, has an average total of around 1,750 hours of sunshine per year. This is much higher than the UKs average of about 1,340 hours of sunshine a year, the relief of the county reflects the geology. The chalk uplands of the South Downs occupies the coastal strip between Brighton and Eastbourne, there are two river gaps, the Rivers Ouse and Cuckmere. The Seven Sisters, where the Downs meet the sea, are the remnants of dry valleys cut into the chalk, to the east of Beachy Head lie the marshlands of the Pevensey Levels, formerly flooded by the sea but now enclosed within a deposited beach. At Bexhill the land begins to rise again where the sands and clays of the Weald meet the sea, further east are the Pett Levels, more marshland, beyond which is the estuary of the River Rother. On the far side of the estuary are the dunes of Camber Sands, the highest point of the Downs within the county is Ditchling Beacon, at 814 feet, it is termed a Marilyn. The Weald occupies the northern borderlands of the county, between the Downs and Weald is a narrow stretch of lower lying land, many of the rivers and streams occupying this area originate in the Weald
4.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
5.
Art Deco
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Art Deco, sometimes simply referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. It took its name, short for Arts Decorators, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925 and it combined modernist styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, Art Deco was a pastiche of many different styles, sometimes contradictory, united by a desire to be modern. It featured rare and expensive materials such as ebony and ivory, the Chrysler Building and other skyscrapers of New York were the most visible monuments of the new style. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the became more subdued. New materials arrived, including chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic, a more sleek form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s, it featured curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco became one of the first truly international architectural styles, with examples found in European cities, the style came to an end with the beginning of World War II. Deco was replaced as the dominant global style by the functional and unadorned styles of modernism. The term arts décoratifs was first used in France in 1858, in 1868, Le Figaro newspaper used the term art décoratifs with respect to objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de lOpéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewelry and glass designers and it took its present name of ENSAD in 1927. The term Art déco was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in the Times, describing the different styles at the exhibit. Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major book on the style. Hillier noted that the term was already being used by art dealers and cites The Times, in 1971, Hillier organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book about it, The World of Art Deco. The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, the term arts décoratifs had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs, or SAD, was founded in 1901, a similar movement developed in Italy. The first international exhibition devoted entirely to the arts, the Esposizione international dArte decorative moderna, was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration, Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, and later in the Salon dautomne. French nationalism also played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts, in 1911 the SAD proposed the holding of a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912
6.
International Style (architecture)
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A visually weightless quality engendered by the use of cantilever construction. Glass and steel, in combination with usually less visible reinforced concrete, are the materials of the construction. Commissioned in 1931 by the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr Jr. The original exhibition catalogue was then followed up immediately by the book titled The International Style, the aesthetics-based definition of The International Style identified, categorized and expanded upon characteristics said to be common to Modernism across the world and its stylistic aspects. Hitchcock and Johnson identified three principles, the expression of volume rather than mass, the emphasis on rather than preconceived symmetry. The aim of Hitchcock and Johnson was to define a style that would encapsulate this modern architecture, all the works in the 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition were carefully selected, only displaying those that strictly followed these rules. Many Modernists disliked the term, believing that they had arrived at an approach to architecture that transcended style, the British architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner commented, To me what had been achieved in 1914 was the style of the century. It never occurred to me to look beyond, here was the one and only style which fitted all those aspects which mattered, aspects of economics and sociology, of materials and function. It seems folly to think anybody would wish to abandon it. The exhibition Modern Architecture, International Exhibition opened on February 9,1932, at the Museum of Modern Art, in the Heckscher Building at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in New York. In the largest exhibition space, Room C, were works by Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Room B was a section titled Housing, presenting the need for a new domestic environment” as it had been identified by historian and critic Lewis Mumford. In Room D were works by Raymond Hood and Richard Neutra, among these works was shown Alvar Aaltos Turun Sanomat newspaper offices building in Turku, Finland. The exhibition is significant for its approach to the architectural exhibition. Highly curated in nature, the 1932 exhibition was driven by a desire to promote and consolidate the theory of international modernism, as such, the exhibition featured prominently the work of the core of the modernist group. With Van Der Rohe, Corbusier, Oud, and Gropius at the forefront, moMAs then director Alfred H. Barr hired art historians Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock to curate the museums first architectural exhibition. In 1929, Johnson attended the ceremony of his sister in Wellesley College, where he met Barr. In one month, Barr would be interviewed by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller for the position of the director of the MOMA, Barr added Johnson to MOMAs Junior Advisory Committee. Hitchcock graduated in 1924 after having completed his studies in three years and spending his senior year in architecture
7.
Erich Mendelsohn
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Mendelsohn is a pioneer of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architecture, notably with his 1921 Mossehaus design. Erich Mendelsohn was born in Allenstein, East Prussia and his birthplace was at the former Oberstrasse 21, now no.10 Staromiejska street. A plaque embedded on the wall on the side of Barbara street commemorates his place of birth and he was the fifth of six children, his mother was Emma Esther, a hatmaker and his father David was a shopkeeper. He attended a humanist Gymnasium in Allenstein and continued with commercial training in Berlin, in 1906 he took up the study of national economics at the University of Munich. In 1908 he began studying architecture at the Technical University of Berlin, from 1912 to 1914 he worked as an independent architect in Munich. In 1915 he married the cellist Luise Maas, through his wife, he met the cello-playing astrophysicist Erwin Finlay Freundlich. Freundlich was the brother of Herbert Freundlich, the deputy director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie, Freundlich wished to build a suitable astronomical observatory to experimentally confirm Einsteins Theory of Relativity. Through his relationship with Freundlich, Mendelsohn had the opportunity to design and this relationship and also the family friendship with the Luckenwalde hat manufacturers Salomon and Gustav Herrmann helped Mendelsohn to an early success. The 2011 documentary film by Duki Dror titled Incessant Visions is about Erich Mendelsohn and his wife, in which Dror animates the memoirs of Louise, at the end of 1918, upon his return from World War I, he settled his practice in Berlin. The Einsteinturm and the hat factory in Luckenwalde established his reputation, the Hat Factory was commissioned in 1921, Mendelsohns design included four production halls, a boiler, a turbine house, two gatehouses and a dyeing hall. The dyeing hall became a feature of the factory, the building was shaped with a modern. The structure even ironically resembled a hat, as early as 1924 Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst produced a booklet about his work. In that same year, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius and his practice employed as many as forty people, among them, as a trainee, Julius Posener, later an architectural historian. Mendelsohns work encapsulated the consumerism of the Weimar Republic, most particularly in his shops, nonetheless he was also interested in the socialist experiments being made in the USSR, where he designed the Red Banner Textile Factory in 1926. His Mossehaus newspaper offices and Universum cinema were also influential on art deco. In 1926, he bought an old villa, and in 1928, he designed Rupenhorn, nearly 4000 m², with an expensive publication about his new home, illustrated by Amédée Ozenfant among others, Mendelsohn became the subject of envy. In the spring of 1933, in the wake of growing antisemitism and his fortune was seized by the Nazis, his name struck from the list of the German Architects Union, and he was excluded from the Prussian Academy of Arts. In England he began a partnership with Serge Chermayeff, which continued until the end of 1936
8.
Serge Chermayeff
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Serge Ivan Chermayeff was a Russian-born British architect, industrial designer, writer, and co-founder of several architectural societies, including the American Society of Planners and Architects. From 1922 to 1925, he received training at schools in Germany, Austria, France. During this period, he supported himself as a journalist for the Amalgamated Press before becoming chief designer at E. Williams, in 1928, he became a British citizen. That year he and the French designer Paul Follot were placed in charge of the arts department of Waring & Gillow. After practicing architecture for three years, he and the German architect Erich Mendelsohn briefly partnered in 1933 to form their own architectural firm. He was also responsible for Shann House in Rugby, Warwickshire, and Gilbey House and these are all now Listed Buildings, being designated Grade I, Grade II* and Grade II respectively. They were members of the MARS Group, during the 1930s, Chermayeff designed a number of bakelite radio cabinets for the British company EKCO. In 1940, Chermayeff emigrated to the United States where he joined Clarence W. W. Mayhew as associate architect, helping Mayhew design his own residence. Chermayeff taught in 1940 and 1941 at the California School of Fine Arts before moving to Brooklyn College, from 1941 until his death, he maintained his principal residence in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. In 1946, he was recommended by Walter Gropius to become the president of the Institute of Design in Chicago, there, he was a close friend, beginning in 1949, he oversaw the Institutes merger with the Illinois Institute of Technology before ultimately stepping down in 1951. Following his retirement, he taught at Harvard again in 1974. He wrote several books, including Community and Privacy with Christopher Alexander in 1964 and he died in 1996 in Wellfleet. In 1980 he was awarded the Sir Misha Black award and was added to the College of Medallists and his son Ivan Chermayeff is a prominent graphic designer and a founding partner of New York-based design studio Chermayeff & Geismar. Cape Cod Modern House Trust Blum, Betty J. Oral history of Serge Chermayeff, Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago Architects Oral History Project, The Art Institute of Chicago
9.
Modernism
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Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief, the poet Ezra Pounds 1934 injunction to Make it new. Was the touchstone of the approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the novel, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. While J. M. W. Art critic Clement Greenberg describes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-Modernists, There the proto-Modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites actually foreshadowed Manet, with whom Modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, rationalism has also had opponents in the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and later Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom had significant influence on existentialism. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was The Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron, Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals in London, such as Paddington Station and Kings Cross Station. These technological advances led to the building of structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be and these engineering marvels radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, the philosopher Schopenhauer called into question the previous optimism, and his ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Nietzsche. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness, in particular, the notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as lower animals proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued that there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system, historians, and writers in different disciplines, have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Everdell also thinks modernism in painting began in 1885–86 with Seurats Divisionism, the poet Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, and Flauberts novel Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. In the arts and letters, two important approaches developed separately in France, the first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors. Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, the school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention
10.
Willem Marinus Dudok
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Willem Marinus Dudok was a Dutch modernist architect. He became City Architect for the town of Hilversum in 1928 where he was best known for the brick Hilversum Town Hall, not only did he design the building, but also the interior including the carpets, furniture and even the mayors meeting hammer. He also designed and built about 75 houses, public buildings, Dudok initially chose to pursue a military career. At the military academy of Breda he studied engineering and was allowed to assist in designing military buildings. Influenced by other Dutch architects, such as Berlage, he rapidly proved able to adapt his own ideas and he was appointed Assistant Director of Public Works in Leiden in 1913 and Director of Public Works in Hilversum in 1915. He was appointed Hilversums Municipal Architect in 1928, the same year he was assigned the task of expanding the city, which involved designing housing estates, schools, swimming pools and parks and gardens. The City Hall is regarded as his masterpiece and manages to merge the requirements of being both a symbol of the city and an efficient administrative building and it is indicative of the garden-city character of Hilversum. Indeed, Dudok was clearly influenced by Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin, Dudok continued to produce progressive, Dutch modernist structures in Hilversum for decades, through the 1960s, and had international influence. Amongst school designers in the Netherlands, his schools in Hilversum became particularly celebrated, Dudok received the RIBA Gold Medal in 1935 and the AIA Gold Medal in 1955. He also designed buildings in Paris, the Collège néerlandais in the Cité Universitaire, a centre in Baghdad. One of the buildings he designed in Rotterdam now houses a cafe-restaurant named after him and he drew up plans for the rebuilding of The Hague after WW2. This involved a new district for 150,000 people in the southwest of the city and he died, aged 89, in Hilversum
