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Article: HEROISM versus EMPIRICISM.
- Article from:
- The Architectural Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 EMAP Architecture. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the month when the Rogers Millennium Dome opened at Greenwich, London, it seems appropriate to look back on the last time the British organized a major architectural celebratory event: the Festival of Britain, 1951, which marked peace after the Second World War. Robert Gregory analyses its aesthetic origins and intentions.
WITH HINDSIGHT, THE FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN CAN BE seen as the first round of a fight between Corbusian Heroism and Swedish Empiricism. While this conflict may not have been obvious to people visiting the Festival, afterwards it became increasingly public. For example, in 1952 Colin St John Wilson, then with the LCC, and Hugh Casson engaged in a ...