Posts Tagged ‘ architecture ’
‘Never, surely, in all The Buildings of England, did Pevsner express himself so angrily about the treatment of a historic town as he did in the Worcestershire volume, published in 1968.’ Pevsner was slow to wrath, if quick to scorn or irritation, but Gavin Stamp is quite right to note that the ‘development’ of Worcester [ READ MORE ]
Pevsner has been caricatured by the less perceptive of his critics as a rigid prophet of modernism, somehow indirectly responsible for every soulless estate, every multi-storey car park and every decaying tower block erected since the war. In fact, the evidence has always existed to support a more finely nuanced picture of his views on modern architecture, not [ READ MORE ]
Pevsner prized his principles; he also enjoyed violating them on occasion. Some of his best descriptions are of architecture he obviously relished against his better judgement, where there is guilty pleasure in his voice whatever harsh words he may be using. This is the first in a series of ‘soft spots’, buildings Pevsner didn’t mean to like. [ READ MORE ]
In contrast with the Buildings of England years, when he complained that he never read a novel, the young Pevsner seems to have tried to keep up with recent fiction as well, some of it racier than one might have expected. [ READ MORE ]
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