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Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and transnational discourse on modern urban planning and design, 1941–1951

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

ELLEN SHOSHKES
ELLEN SHOSHKES*
Affiliation:
Portland State University, 950 SW 21st Ave. PH-F, Portland, OR 97250, USA
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Abstract

This paper illuminates the significant contributions that Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, a British town planner, editor and educator, made to transnational discourse on modern urban planning and design from 1941 to 1951. This is when she formulated her synthesis of utopian planning ideals, grounded in the bio-regionalism of the Scottish visionary Patrick Geddes and informed by European modernism. Her hybrid grew into the Geddessian branch of the planning arm of the post-war modern movement. In addition to uncovering Tyrwhitt's hidden voice, the article also uses the biography of a transnational actor as a vehicle to analyse the emergence of the concept that urbanism encompasses both the global and the local.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 36 , Special Issue 2: Transnational Urbanism in the Americas , August 2009 , pp. 262 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 This article forms part of a larger project, an intellectual biography of Tyrwhitt, and builds on my previous work on this topic. See: Shoshkes, Ellen, ‘Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: a founding mother of modern urban design’, Planning Perspectives, 21 (2006), 179–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to the Beverly Willis Architectural Foundation for the research support that made this article possible. I would also like to thank the organizers and participants in the Transnational Urbanism Roundtable where I presented this work for their very helpful comments. And I especially thank Sy Adler for his generous editorial review of earlier versions of this paper.

2 Huxley, Julian, ‘A philosophy for UNESCO’, The UNESCO Courier, 3 (1976), 16Google Scholar.

3 Archives of the Royal Institute of British Architects, London (hereafter RIBA), Jaqueline Tyrwhitt collection (hereafter TYJ), box 66, folder 1, résumé 2 Mar. 1945.

4 Unpublished book in the personal collection of Daniel Tyrwhitt, Aberyswyth, Robert Tyrwhitt, Notices and Remains of the Family of Tyrwhitt ([1858] 1872), iii.

5 Tyrwhitt's first cousin, World War I hero Admiral Sir Reginald Yorke Tyrwhitt, held commanding posts in both the Mediterranean and the British China naval station. His sister Brigadier Dame Mary Joan Caroline Tyrwhitt was a British army officer. His son, Admiral St John Tyrwhitt, helped prepare the Indian navy to take command of its fleet in 1956. Tyrwhitt's brother Robert was a naval commander whose submarine sank off Singapore in 1922. Her brother Cuthbert was in the Diplomatic Service and an army officer who died when the Japanese army seized Shanghai in 1942.

6 RIBA, TYJ, box 60, folder 2, personal note on Sigfried Giedion (published in Hommage à Giedion (Basel and Stuttgart, 1971), 121–2).

7 See Tyrwhitt, Jaqueline, ‘A correspondence course in town planning, 1945’, Ekistics, 53, 314/15 (1985), 424–7Google Scholar. This is a special issue of the journal dedicated in memoriam to Tyrwhitt. See also Inés Zalduendo, ‘Jaqueline Tyrwhitt's correspondence courses: town planning in the trenches’, presented at Society of Architectural Historians annual conference, 2003, Vancouver BC.

8 Meller, Helen, Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and Town Planner (London, 1990), 323Google Scholar.

9 Bullock, Nicholas, Building the Post War World: Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Britain (London, 2002), 40Google Scholar.

10 See Mumford, Eric, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 133–4, 142Google Scholar.

11 Tyrwhitt, J., ‘Town planning’, Architects Journal, 1 (1945), 11–29, here 11Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., 13. The reference is to Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge, MA, 1941).

13 Tyrwhitt, ‘Town planning’, 15–16.

14 See Rowse, E.A.A., ‘The planning of a city’, Journal of the Town Planning Institute, 25 (1939), 167–71Google Scholar; Lewis, Jane and Brookes, Barbara, ‘The Peckham Health Centre, “PEP”, and the concept of general practice during the 1930s and 1940s’, Medical History, 27 (1983), 151–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Pearse, I.H. and Crocker, L.H., The Peckham Experiment (London, 1943)Google Scholar.

16 Tyrwhitt, ‘Town planning’, 23.

17 Tyrwhitt, J., ‘Annotated career summary’, Ekistics, 53, 314/15 (1985), 405Google Scholar.

18 Tyrwhitt, J., ‘Training the planner’, in Todd, T. (ed.), Annual Reference Books: Planning and Reconstruction (London, 1946), 209–13, here 210Google Scholar.

19 Archives of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (hereafter NLW), personal collection of Daniel Tyrwhitt (hereafter DT), J. Tyrwhitt travel diaries, USA, 1945.

20 Margy Meyerson, personal communication, Aug. 2008.

21 RIBA, TYJ, box 60, folder 2, personal note on Sigfried Giedion.

22 On the post-war revival of transatlantic exchange among social progressives see Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA., 1998), 485–508Google Scholar.

23 Oberlander, H. Peter and Newbrun, Eva M., Houser: Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905–1964 (Vancouver, 1999), 238Google Scholar.

24 UNESCO electronic archives, annex IV report of the executive secretary Julian Huxley on the work of the Preparatory Commission to the General Conference, 20 Nov. 1946, p. 17. Accessed 22 Dec. 2008: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001393/139308eb.pdf.

25 NLW, DT, J. Tyrwhitt correspondence with Sigfried Giedion, letter to Giedion, 13 Dec. 1947.

26 J. Tyrwhitt, ‘Training the planner in Britain’, International Federation for Housing and Town Planning News Sheet VII, Dec. 1947, n.p.

27 ‘New school history’: http://www.newschool.edu/history.aspx. Accessed 22 Jan. 2009.

28 NLW, DT, J. Tyrwhitt travel diaries, USA, 1948, see entries for Mar. and Apr.

29 RIBA, TYJ, box 39, folder 4, ‘New housing in New York City – first impressions – March 1948’.

30 Ibid.

31 RIBA, TYJ, box 39, folder 3, Charles Abrams, Post-Home News Housing Adviser, 16 Apr. 1948.

32 On the anticipation of Jacobs’ critique by urbanists in England see Klemek, Christopher, ‘Placing Jane Jacobs within the trans-atlantic urban conversation’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 73 (2007), 49–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Oberlander and Newbrun, Houser, 158.

34 Personal communication, Aug. 2008.

35 Bauer, Catherine, ‘Introduction’, TASK, 7/8 (1948), 3–6, here 6Google Scholar.

36 Tyrwhitt, J., ‘Reconstruction: Great Britain’, TASK, 7/8 (1948), 20–4, here 20Google Scholar.

37 Huxley, Julian, ‘UNESCO’, TASK, 7/8 (1948), 73Google Scholar.

38 Tyrwhitt, J., ‘Editor's note’, in Patrick Geddes, Geddes in India, ed. Tyrwhitt, J. (London, 1947), 6Google Scholar.

39 Lewis Mumford, ‘Introduction’, in Geddes, Geddes in India, 9.

40 Huxley, ‘A philosophy for UNESCO’, 16.

41 Geddes, Geddes in India, 25, 26.

42 Ibid., 26

43 Johnson-Marshall, Percy, Ekistics, 53, 314/15 (1985), 16–18, here 17Google Scholar.

44 NLW, DT, J. Tyrwhitt travel diaries, USA 1948, see entry for 24 Mar.

45 Tyrwhitt, J., ‘Introduction’, in Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution, ed. Tyrwhitt, J. (London, 1949), ix–xvi, here xGoogle Scholar.

46 Ibid., xi.

47 Mumford, Lewis, ‘Patrick Geddes’, in Moore, H.T. and Deutsch, K.W. (eds.), The Human Prospect (Carbondale IL, 1965), 99–114, here 103Google Scholar.

48 Tyrwhitt, in Geddes, Cities in Evolution, xvi.

49 Mumford, ‘Patrick Geddes’, 104, 106.

50 Taylor, Walter, ‘Book review: planning 1948’, Land Economics, 25 (1949), 328–9, here 328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Cited in Carlson, Eric, ‘One of the first – the world her professional habitat’, Ekistics, 53, 314/15 (1985), 489–91, here 489Google Scholar.

52 NLW, DT, J. Tyrwhitt travel diaries, USA Oct. 1948 – Feb. 1949. See entries for Feb.

53 RIBA, TYJ, box 39 file 13, ‘Book review textbook on town & country planning’, 1st draft of blurb for criticism 1 Jul. 1950.

54 Hebbert, Michael, ‘The daring experiment: social scientists and land-use planning in 1940s Britain’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 10, 1 (1983), 3–17, here 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 RIBA, TYJ, box 60, folder 2, personal note on Sigfried Giedion.

56 Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and Architecture, rev. edn (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 700Google Scholar.

57 Giedion, Sigfried, ‘The need for a new monumentality’, in Zucker, Paul (ed.), Architecture and City Planning (New York, 1944), 549–68Google Scholar; Giedion, S., Architecture You and Me. The Diary of a Development’ (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 65, 70–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mumford, CIAM Discourse, 150–2.

58 Tyrwhitt, ‘Annotated career summary’, 406; S. Giedion, A Decade of New Architecture (Zurich, 1951).

59 Harvard University, Loeb Library Archives (hereafter Loeb), CIAM collection (hereafter CIAM), correspondence, from J.T. to Sert, 30 Jan. 1950; and S.G. to Sert, 21 Nov. 1950.

60 Sokratis Georgiadus, Sigfried Giedion. An Intellectual Biography, trans. Colin Hall (Edinburgh, 1993), 166.

61 Assemblée de constructeurs pour une renovation architecturale, founded by Le Courbusier during the occupation of France. See Mumford, CIAM Discourse, 153.

62 Loeb, CIAM, correspondence.

63 Loeb, CIAM, correspondence, J.T. to Sert, 15 Jul. 1950; Sert to J.T., 18 Jul. 1950; J.T. to Sert, 8 Aug. 1950; and Sert to S.G., 15 Aug. 1950.

64 Loeb, CIAM, correspondence, Sert to J.T., 9 Nov. 1950; and J.T. to Sert, 1 Dec. 1950.

65 RIBA, TYJ, box 45, folder 6, ‘CIAM 8, open session, background of the core July 9, 1951’.

66 RIBA, TYJ, box 59, folder 17, J.T. to S.G., 24 May 1951.

67 RIBA TYJ, box 45, folder 6, ‘CIAM 8, open session, background of the core, July 9, 1951.’

68 Ibid., n.p.

69 Ibid., n.p.

70 Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1967 edn), 702.

71 RIBA, TYJ, box 59, folder 17, J.T. to S.G. 25 Apr. 1951.

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