RIBA Bookshops

Miles Glendinning

Miles Glendinning is Professor of Architectural Conservation and Director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His publications include the award-winning Tower Block (with Stefan Muthesius), Architecture’s Evil Empire, and Modern Architect, on the life and times of Sir Robert Matthew.

Reviewed for Institute of Historic Building Conservation journal by Dennis G Rodwell, architect and cultural heritage consultant

Modern Architect is published at a time of renewed interest in the coterie of post-war architectural knights that included Robert Matthew’s fellow Scot, Basil Spence, and his deputy then successor at the London County Council, Leslie Martin. Born into the Edwardian era, they were all were members of a generation of architects, urban planners and politicians who witnessed at first hand the devastation of European cities in the second world war, and were at the height of their careers and influence in the decades that followed.

More, perhaps, than any of his architect contemporaries, Matthew encapsulated the ambiguity and duality of his time: on the one hand, the opportunity that the unparalleled wartime destruction afforded to create a brave new world; on the other, the importance of conservation as a response. In this latter, he ultimately shared common ground with contemporaries in politics such as Duncan Sandys, founder of the Civic Trust in 1957 and promoter of the Civic Amenities Act in 1967, and André Malraux, France’s first minister of culture and instigator of the programme of proactive secteurs sauvegardés (protected areas) in cities on the other side of the Channel, whose example helped inspire Matthew in his native city of Edinburgh.

Miles Glendinning, director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies, Edinburgh College of Art, and author of numerous titles on the history of architecture in Scotland and the theme of modernism, has written what may prove to be the definitive biography of his subject. Glendinning has enjoyed unrivalled access to personal and professional archives, as well as to family members and colleagues. He has a clear eye for the many influences that impacted on Matthew’s life.

The ambiguities began well before the 1939–45 war and tell us much about the struggle of direction in architectural education in the inter-war period. Apprenticed to the noted arts-andcrafts architect Sir Robert Lorimer (in whose practice Matthew’s father was a partner), steeped in the romantic humanism of Sir Patrick Geddes and trained at the Edinburgh College of Art under his son-in-law Sir Frank Mears, Matthew also came under the formative influence of Sir Patrick Abercrombie, whose 1940s plans for the remodelling of historic cities the length and breadth of Britain were largely uncompromising in their approach to urban heritage.

With these multiple professional influences, coupled with the cumulative socio-economic changes of the first half of the 20th century, it is hardly surprising that Matthew’s career did not follow a simple path.

In what is at times a conversational style of writing, Glendinning talks us through the apparent dichotomy between a man who, by the 1960s, was recognised as the leading figure of postwar modern architecture in Scotland, ogre of the nascent conservation movement for his involvement in the substantive destruction of Edinburgh’s George Square, and by the 1970s had employed his extensive powers of personal, professional and political persuasion to act as the driving force behind the setting up and funding of the Edinburgh New Town Conservation Committee, thereby earning plaudits as saviour of that city’s immense Georgian heritage.

Was this a man who was repudiating the modernist philosophy of planned renewal on which he had built the reputation of his international practice? Was he responding positively to the growing crisis of confidence in modernism and applying his energies to the ‘big idea’ – another form of planned strategy – of keeping the New Town intact? Or was he, as Glendinning subsumes in this narrative and develops elsewhere (see ‘The heroic age of urban conservation’, Context 111), reflecting the thesis that the modern and conservation movements are two sides of the same coin?

Glendinning characterises Matthew as foremost of the great public architects of the post-war era in Britain, a gentleman-leader whose strong sense of personal mission was combined with a passionate commitment to collective welfare-socialism. At the same time, the 640 pages of Modern Architect contain much family and domestic detail that readers may find superfluous at the expense of clear analysis of Matthew’s lasting contribution to his profession.

Given, for example, that he and his knightly contemporaries were essentially team players who eschewed self-trumpeting, it seems unnecessary to engage in extensive debate over whether it was Matthew or Leslie Martin (or indeed Peter Moro) who designed the 1951 Royal Festival Hall. More relevant would be some reflection on the legacy of Matthew’s social democratic credentials in today’s era of ‘iconic’ building by ‘signature architects’, not least those that emanate from the stable of RMJM.