The Modernist Home: Domesticity and the Popularisation of the Avant-garde 1927-1951
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: English Faculty
Abstract
My thesis, The Modernist Home: Domesticity and the Popularisation of the Avant-garde, 1927-1951, will seek to interrogate three research questions. How did the notion of domesticity evolve according to the mass improvement in living conditions during the period in question, and how was this reflected in literature? To what extent did architecture associated with the International Style come into conflict/conversation/collaboration with alternative approaches to domestic modernism, for example the traditionalism of Georgian and Gothic revival, and queer culture? And lastly, how did domestic space act as an interdisciplinary popularising catalyst for literature, architecture and the visual art in the period?
These research questions are urgent today primarily because they relate to contemporary approaches to the heritage industry and the issue of Britain's modernist architectural legacy. Key buildings are threatened and in need of historical rehabilitation. Recent events such as the demolition Peter and Alison Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens and the Grenfell Tower fire have pushed Britain's post-war social housing back to the front of the public consciousness and have highlighted the need to better understand its architectural and aesthetic roots. Understanding domesticity and the friction between private and communal living as it was actively debated across Europe in the interwar period, is vital to achieve this. Further, as we face a continuing housing crisis my thesis will raise questions of how one relates to the built environment, the value of home and the disputed nature of homeliness. As it is a collaborative project with the National Trust's 2 Willow Road, the former home of architect Ernö Goldfinger, my thesis will also provide an opportunity to comment on the impact of the Trust owning and maintaining modernist properties like Willow Road approximately 25 years after its acquisition.
The synthetic methodology I will apply to this project, entailed by the balanced treatment of canonical modernist architecture and its counter-cultural antagonists, is a novel approach to the theme of domesticity in the late modernist period. The interdisciplinary nature of my study also sets it apart from exclusively literary or architectural examinations of the topic. Although I will prioritize a broad and inclusive approach to the cultural history of the period including ephemeral texts, periodicals, magazines, music and film, access to Ernö Goldfinger's little used archives at the National Trust's 2 Willow Road will provide fresh contribution to the field through previously unpublished material, alongside archival research into related architects and domestic buildings. This diverse range of sources will be bound together by aspects of Marxist and queer theory. The combination of these elements is uniquely designed to open a window to attitudes towards domesticity.
I acknowledge with gratitude foundational studies from which my own work departs. David Spurr's Architecture and Modern Literature (2012) illustrates the wealth of material to be found in literary representations of architecture, though his work focuses on a far broader historical and geographical remit than my own. Like Spurr, I too deal with literary representations of (domestic) architecture, but I will also consider literature as a domestic artifact in the form of popular periodicals and magazines that reached an unprecedented readership in the 1930s. Lise Jaillant's Cheap Modernism (2017), which focuses on mass-produced editions of previously limited-run avant-garde texts such Joyce's Ulysses and the work of Virginia Woolf, forms a helpful precedent here, although my priority will be the material culture surrounding lesser-known, non-canonical literary figures. When I deal with the traditional, romantic, and localized character of late modernism in Britain, the interdisciplinary eclecticism and prose style of Alexandra Harris's Romantic Moderns (2010) is a ke
These research questions are urgent today primarily because they relate to contemporary approaches to the heritage industry and the issue of Britain's modernist architectural legacy. Key buildings are threatened and in need of historical rehabilitation. Recent events such as the demolition Peter and Alison Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens and the Grenfell Tower fire have pushed Britain's post-war social housing back to the front of the public consciousness and have highlighted the need to better understand its architectural and aesthetic roots. Understanding domesticity and the friction between private and communal living as it was actively debated across Europe in the interwar period, is vital to achieve this. Further, as we face a continuing housing crisis my thesis will raise questions of how one relates to the built environment, the value of home and the disputed nature of homeliness. As it is a collaborative project with the National Trust's 2 Willow Road, the former home of architect Ernö Goldfinger, my thesis will also provide an opportunity to comment on the impact of the Trust owning and maintaining modernist properties like Willow Road approximately 25 years after its acquisition.
The synthetic methodology I will apply to this project, entailed by the balanced treatment of canonical modernist architecture and its counter-cultural antagonists, is a novel approach to the theme of domesticity in the late modernist period. The interdisciplinary nature of my study also sets it apart from exclusively literary or architectural examinations of the topic. Although I will prioritize a broad and inclusive approach to the cultural history of the period including ephemeral texts, periodicals, magazines, music and film, access to Ernö Goldfinger's little used archives at the National Trust's 2 Willow Road will provide fresh contribution to the field through previously unpublished material, alongside archival research into related architects and domestic buildings. This diverse range of sources will be bound together by aspects of Marxist and queer theory. The combination of these elements is uniquely designed to open a window to attitudes towards domesticity.
I acknowledge with gratitude foundational studies from which my own work departs. David Spurr's Architecture and Modern Literature (2012) illustrates the wealth of material to be found in literary representations of architecture, though his work focuses on a far broader historical and geographical remit than my own. Like Spurr, I too deal with literary representations of (domestic) architecture, but I will also consider literature as a domestic artifact in the form of popular periodicals and magazines that reached an unprecedented readership in the 1930s. Lise Jaillant's Cheap Modernism (2017), which focuses on mass-produced editions of previously limited-run avant-garde texts such Joyce's Ulysses and the work of Virginia Woolf, forms a helpful precedent here, although my priority will be the material culture surrounding lesser-known, non-canonical literary figures. When I deal with the traditional, romantic, and localized character of late modernism in Britain, the interdisciplinary eclecticism and prose style of Alexandra Harris's Romantic Moderns (2010) is a ke
People |
ORCID iD |
| Sean Ketteringham (Student) |