Landscape Modernism Renounced

The Career of Christopher Tunnard (1910-1979)

David Jacques, Jan Woudstra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136616334
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Historic Preservation in Architecture

Before the Second World War landscape architect Christopher Tunnard was the first author on Modernism in Landscape in the English language, but later became alarmed by the destructive forces of Post-war reconstruction. Between the 1950s and the 1970s he was in the forefront of the movement to save the city, becoming an acclaimed author sympathetic to preservation.

Ironically it was the Modernist ethos that he had so fervently advocated before the war that was the justification for the dismemberment of great cities by officials, engineers and planners. This was not the first time that Tunnard had to re-evaluate his principles, as he had done so in the 1930s in rejecting Arts-and-Crafts in favour of Modernism. This book tracks his changing ideology, by reference to his writings, his colleagues and his work.

Christopher Tunnard is one of the most influential figures in Landscape Architecture and his journey is one that still resonates in the discipline today. His leading role in first embracing the tenets of Modernism and then moving away from to embrace a more conservationist approach can be seen in the success and impact on the profession of those with whom he worked and taught.

1 Prolegomena

(‘Prolegomena’ was the term Tunnard used for his prologue to World with a View.)

Teachers of landscape architecture today may well have been taught by professors and lecturers who were themselves profoundly influenced by Christopher Tunnard. His early writings and brief teaching career at Harvard discredited earlier modes of thought and promulgated a Modernist mindset.¹ This is recognisable in its focus on the future, and privileged individual genius. Tunnard afterwards ploughed another furrow in urban planning, and the loss of his intellectual leadership of landscape architecture in the English-speaking world had repercussions on a whole range of issues. Not the least of these is that today practising landscape architects are often ignorant of the history of their own profession, and few have much perspective on the complex and nuanced intellectual traditions in which they work.

This was not so eighty years ago. The Arts and Crafts tradition dominated British practice, as the Beaux-Arts tradition did in North America. The latter, particularly, emphasised comprehensive knowledge of the achievements of the landscape design profession, and both traditions were largely resistant to Modernism throughout the 1930s. The wartime spirit during World War II and postwar reconstruction required forward-looking and optimistic approaches, and the design professions, by then convinced that Modernism was the way forward, expanded hugely as reconstruction, new towns, schools, hospitals and other public projects were entrusted to them. A younger generation of landscape designers on both sides of the Atlantic eagerly read Christopher Tunnard’s Gardens in the Modern Landscape because it was the first book in English which crossed the boundary from traditional garden architecture and made links with Modernist architecture.

Modernism in landscape design had started in Continental Europe, but with postwar paper restrictions there were few publications on landscape design, and so Tunnard’s book was also of significance in non-English-speaking countries. There were some, for example J.T.P. Bijhouwer, who were sceptical about the modern nature of Tunnard’s designs.² Despite such doubts, the book was a most effective channel for promulgating pre-war Continental design philosophy to postwar English-reading professionals, and the ideas for communal landscape

Figure 1.1 The dustjacket of Christopher Tunnard’s Gardens in the Modern Landscape (1938) which was the first book in English which crossed the boundary from traditional garden architecture and made links with Modernist architecture.

were consonant with postwar ideals. One author has even ventured that in the 1940s Tunnard was ‘the world’s leading theorist of modern landscape architecture’.³ This might actually have been so, if the words ‘English-speaking’ had been prefixed. Furthermore, Gardens in the Modern Landscape remained the only text in English on modern landscape design till Garrett Eckbo’s Landscape for Living (1950).

By then, however, Tunnard had altered his own views and interests significantly. Once he had been awakened to the social and broader environmental aspects of physical change, design gave way to planning. The vision of a new world held by Modernist architects was for high-rise dwellings, and the vision of engineers was for fast-flowing highways and multi-level intersections. Tunnard loved the city, and as he observed how these visions became reality in many public projects, requiring demolitions on a vast scale, and tearing the heart and soul out of communities, he was one of those who, against the flow, argued for alternative approaches. As a professor at Yale he argued ceaselessly for a humanist ethos to prevail in the reordering of cities. Hence the drive for reconstruction, which made his early book so influential with the new generation of landscape designers, became the force that he afterwards felt it necessary to curb.

This irony reveals the nature and temper of Tunnard’s thought at various stages of his career, but also, when his shadow is cast against the backdrop of professional and academic norms, it provides deep insights into the conventional thinking of the time, and how radical and forward thinking Tunnard was.

This monograph does not seek to mythologise Tunnard as a genius or a hero, clever and profound as he was. He had mentors and collaborators that helped him shape his thoughts, and he was thereby no isolated loner. On the other hand, he faced a degree of scepticism or incomprehension from colleagues and contemporaries at almost all points of his career. Hence this monograph pursues the windings of Tunnard’s intellectual journey in the fields of landscape and urbanism, highlighting the interplay between Tunnard on the first part, his mentors and collaborators on the second, and the prevailing orthodox view of the time on the third. In doing so, the rise of Modernist landscape architecture can be better understood, as can the emergence of counter-thought which would eventually go under the title of post-Modernism.

The determination and achievement of Tunnard and the small band of like-minded writers and practitioners can be appreciated when the prevailing conditions in Britain and North America are understood more fully. These are explained below prior to Tunnard’s biography.

The landscape profession in Britain in the 1930s

When Tunnard was training to be a landscape designer in the early 1930s, English garden writing was still dominated by the work of two octogenarians, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll. Yet, while they carried out some designs (she with the much younger architect, Edwin Lutyens) and set the style, the majority of gardens were designed either by architects, or else by nursery firms.

Besides Lutyens, the best-known practitioners in landscape design were Thomas Mawson, Edward White and Percy Cane, and their firms had the bulk of the work. Mawson and his son Prentice and Edward White made their livings by designing very architectural gardens. In fact Thomas Mawson, who had been trained as an architect, referred to himself as a ‘garden architect’. He was one of the few English landscape designers with an international reputation, cultivated particularly through his book The Art and Craft of Garden Making which appeared in five editions between 1900 and 1926 codifying the principles of Arts and Crafts garden style.

The up-and-coming architects who included gardens in their repertoire in the 1930s were J.C. ‘Jock’ Shepherd, Geoffrey Jellicoe and Oliver Hill.⁴ Russell Page was another youthful designer setting out on the same course, having studied at The Slade and then drifted into garden design. Having worked briefly for one of the older generation, Richard Sudell, he had teamed up with Jellicoe by 1931.

Percy Cane was the most prominent early example of those who became a garden architect via the other main route besides architecture — horticulture.⁵ He had previously been to art school, showed a talent for draughtsmanship, became a journalist, went to a school of horticulture and finally launched himself as a garden architect in 1919, aged 38. His successful practice was boosted by self-publicity, and by the 1930s he was known for a string of publications and projects in several countries. Madeline Agar, a horticulturalist, and her former pupil, Brenda Colvin, lacked the art training, but both had small practices, and were notable for incorporating sound ecological understanding into planting design.⁶ Many horticulturally trained designers were salaried by landscape gardening contractors. George Dillistone had been director and manager of the landscape department at R. Wallace’s. Stanley Hart, having trained at Cane’s for three years, worked for En Tout Cas. Sylvia Crowe worked for Cutbush’s.

In 1929 Sudell took the lead in founding an institute that he intended to be The Society of Garden Architects, but which adopted the American term of ‘landscape architect’ (see below), i.e. the Institute of Landscape Architects (ILA). It was envisaged that members would have the same professional relationship with their clients as architects had with theirs, working in their interests and taking full responsibility for any errors. Gilbert Jenkins, who had made some impressive topiary gardens in his time, and who was vice-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), wrote the ILA constitution. It shared the RIBA’s ethos and many of its rules: for example, designers salaried by nurseries could join the ILA as ‘trade associates’ only, rather than as full associates or fellows.

Jellicoe proposed Thomas Mawson as President — ‘the Institute must have a great name’.⁷ Always the believer in organisation and education for the professions, Mawson accepted. White and Prentice Mawson were invited to join, and they accepted, becoming the next two presidents. Sudell accepted their pre-eminence with good grace, becoming the first editor of the ILA’s journal, Landscape and Garden (L&G) in 1934.

The other profession closely linked to landscape design was town and country planning. The Town Planning Institute was founded in 1914. The congestion, pollution and squalor of older cities had led to the establishment of Garden Cities, new planned communities in the countryside. Town planning was seen principally in terms of spaciousness in layout for the sake of beauty and modern transport, and the implementation of building bye-laws for health and safety. The layouts chosen in the inter-war period tended towards stately geometry rather than the picturesqueness of nineteenth-century new settlements. Thomas Adams (1871–1940), who had been director of the Regional Plan of New York 1923–30, took a considerable interest in landscape after returning to Britain in 1936. Thomas Mawson had been a prominent member of the Town Planning Institute (TPI), as was the case with Thomas Sharp, President of the ILA after World War II.

There was no formal academic course in architecture in Britain till the twentieth century, but trainees, articled to established architects, had started the Architectural Association (AA) in 1847 to supplement their in-work training (Calvert Vaux, the co-designer of Central Park, New York, was an early member). The length of such training prior to acceptance into the RIBA had traditionally been set at two years. It was logical that the same should apply to those wishing to join the ILA. Educational provision in landscape design was generally lacking, but a few courses in horticulture gave ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landscape Modernism Renounced
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Foreword
• 1 Prolegomena
• PART I Biography
• PART II Landscape and urbanism
• Annex A: Brief biographical facts
• Annex B: Tunnard’s principal landscape designs
• Annex C: Tunnard’s writings
• Annex D: Bibliography
• Index