The New Pamphleteer

I found this yesterday. It's a teacher's handbook for teaching arts and crafts (making) in schools. I couldn't see a date on it, but it looks to be from the 1920s or 1930. The book has some lovely colour plates with that pre-WW2 chalky flat-colour that you see in posters. I like the Mondrian style of these particular illustrations.

The authors are a poster designer and commercial artist, Litttlejohns, and AC Horth, who was a prolific author of how-to-make -things books, mostly for boys.

Paris auctioneers are selling the cast and wrought iron structure of the historic sheep market shed from La Villette. It's in parts, stored in a field somewhere...If I had greater funds, I would definitely buy this as my grand design!

The building was designed by Jules de Mérindol and manufactured in Argenteul and Bourges befiore assembly on site. These pictures give a sense of the scale, conceptual simplicity and elegance of these structures.

What is for sale is the frame of the building, without the glass and panels that enclose the space. I love corrugated metal and glass walls (Peter Rice etc), so this is all right-up-my-street! Obviously, buying the structure is just the start; you need a plot, warehousing, logistics and a legal understanding of what can be done, and where...

In Britain, we are familiar with cast iron as a building material from Ironbridge (1770) and as a kit-of-parts assembly of infinite extension from Paxman's Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The glazed sheds of the great railway termini gave public-facing expression to these industrial structures. Much later, Cedric Price re-cast the potential of these open structures through a combination of interaction and flexibility as the defining function of modern space.

The livestock markets at La Villette were cleared and re-purposed as a scientific and cultural space with, by happy co-incidence, a mega-structure style fun palace (deriving from Price) at its heart.

The legacy of these simple structures can be seen in a wide variety of modern buildings by, amongst others, Prouvé, Eames, Piano, Rogers and Foster. I have posted about some of this already, and about the associated engineering genius required. Just pop any of those names into the archive box, above. It's worth noting that, were you to du this now, the advances in material technologies and manufacturing would allow for bigger, lighter and stronger parts. I wonder how much of the 19C structure could be taken away whist maintaining structural integrity? Alternatively, could the parts be reconfigured into a variety of smaller units...a different version of the box-park idea. I posted before about Foster's Renault Parts building in Swindon.

In general I am very much in favour of inserting contemporary elements into old structures and spaces, so I wouldn't be too precious about conserving this shed as was. If you are interested in the potential of new-inside-old building, check out Astley Castle for the Landmark Trust by WWM. Otherwise, Bofil's house and office, La Fabrica is fabulous too, and Caruso St John's, catering school in Lille.

One thought is to rebuild the structure, as was, in accordance with classical conservation. More interesting is to explore the potential of this kit-of-parts, and to build a number of smaller, domestic scaled, units according to the Corbusier Domino model and its iterations by Eames, Prouvé and Hopkins etc.

The Crystal Palace was put up in record time, dismantled and re-assembled in South London. It can be done.

Here are some pictures of this amazing kit-of-parts...

This is the cover of a guide to the 19C industrial and civic architecture of Paris. Somewhere, I have Osbert Lancaster's book about building the Crystal Palace...(found it now.

I love the idea of full-scale Meccano. One of the things you learn from construction toys (Lego and Meccano etc) is the relation between norms (standard parts) and the various forms of space and structure that can be elaborated and at what scale...

BBC4TV are screening a French dramatisation of the comic book series of The Sentinels. This tells the story of the development of a group of super-soldiers who derive their powers from a secret serum - a bit like the secret potion is Asterix. The story draws on various themes of robotic cybernetics and from the history of the war.

I'm thrilled to be adding Anya's lovely book about punk graphics to my collection. The triangulation of culture, energy and style is the perfect art school project, and is beautifully realised, with just the right wonky. It's on the bookcase now, in pride of place and facing out.

This lovely book arrived yesterday. It tells the story of the publishers, Thames + Hudson as a celebration of their 75 years of publishing.

My own interest in the expanded print culture of post-war Britain, reconstruction and cultural change was given a consistent anchor-point through the books published by Thames + Hudson. I look at my bookcase and can see many titles from across more-or-less their whole history. I even have books from WW2 by Adprint.

My earliest memories from books are of the mysterious pictures included in various titles from the famous Britain in Pictures series from WW2. It turns out these books were printed by Adprint, the forerunner of Thames + Hudson.

In some ways I've spent the whole of my life within these books and the combination of art and life that they celebrate through both the content and form of their titles.

In the 1980s, I spent a short time living in an arts-and-crafts house in Hammersmith. That introduced me to William Morris and Emery Walker and to publishing as an important expression of social progress through design reform. I remember a shop in Guildford, where I grew up, called Paperback Parade. It stocked more-or-less all of the Penguin and Pelican titles, with many shown with covers facing from the shelf. That's when I started to judge books by their covers. The combination of books, shops and lifestyle was always exciting to me.

For me the late 1960s was an explosion of graophic energy. This was exoressed in books and magazines, advertising posters, shop fronts and record sleeves...

Alan Aldridge developed a style that used the countercultural themes and styling of Oz magazine and applied it to a wider audience. Here he revisits the famous aternate reality of Alice's wonderland from the 19C.

This is the cover of a pamphlet for architects, published by the Royal Institute of British Architects, that describes the background for the discussion abut post-WW2 reconstruction. The book's cover is a photomontage with an view of London from the west. The book was published to coincide with a public exhibition at the National Gallery. There's a folded paper list of the exhibits at the NG inserted within this pamphlet.

I like the cover design of this and the contents are right up-my-street too.

It's a surprise to many people that, within the dominant narrative of Britain at war and with rationing and shortages etc, a publishing book ocured during WW2. The period of re-armament, after the retreat from France, afforded an opportunity for the discussion about war aims that considered the wider challenges of reconstruction as an opportunity for modernisation and social progress.

I've always been drawn to these themes and have a small collection of publications and posters from WW2. These feed into the discussion about the expansion of London, green-belt etc, slum-clearance, new towns and the Festival of Britain (1951). George Orwell (1941) The Lion and the Unicorn makes the case for political change as a necessary condition for both victory and social progress.

Toward a new architecture of humanism, and dedicated to Walter Gropius...and with punchy page lay-outs and illustration by Peter Chermayeff.

I love it when architecture, books and design come together as an expression of an idea. Perfect.

The Chermayeff family name is top modern. Father Serge was first-period modernist in Britain and the USA whose work combined materials and space to define new shapes and spaces for living...

This lovely screen print was made by Sister Mary Corita in 1966.

Corita Kent (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. At age 18 she entered the religious order, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, eventually teaching and then heading the art department at their College in Los Angeles.

During the course of her career, her artwork evolved from using figurative and religious imagery to incorporating advertising images and slogans, popular song lyrics, biblical verses, and literature. Throughout the ‘60s, her work became increasingly political, urging viewers to consider poverty, racism, and social injustice.

In 1968, she left the order and moved to Boston. After 1970, her work evolved through living in a new environment. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986.

Using the potential of low-tech, but entirely mechanical, screen-printing, Corita developed a practice that was therapeutic, emancipatory, progressive and accessible, by virtue of technical simplicity and cost. Also, Corita kept it fun and retained a joy in progress that is important in keeping everyone moving forward.

Accordingly, this practice aligned perfectly with the values of the 1960s counter-culture in the espousal of social justice.

The connection between art and life, as lived through Corita's practice and example, is an expression of the transcendent potential of art at both an individual and collective level...this is exactly as described in the radical potential of design reform and in Walter Benjamin's famous essay, The Author as Producer...

I was ten in 1968; which was old enough to see that something exciting was happening, but too young to understand exactly what it meant. For me, the late 1960s was experienced as an explosion of graphic design, at scale, in colour, and with an exciting and dynamic energy. I don't think I saw Corita Kent's work until much later, but I sensed it's energy across thousands of miles! Pop-Art with purpose, and my life in design...

One of the things about screen printing is that you can print onto lots of different surfaces. This print is on a sort of felted packing material, or wrapping paper. Perhaps it was a kind of experiment. Nevertheless, the print is signed.

Corita established a side-walk facing studio in an old shop unit. This placed her practice at the centre of community and made it visible. to everyone. That was a brave and beautiful form of engagement and out-reach.