A305/18: Edwin Lutyens: Deanery Gardens

In the context of the exhibition The University Is Now on Air: Broadcasting Modern Architecture, the CCA presents twenty-four broadcasts from the course A305, History of Architecture and Design 1890-1939, by The Open University. To learn more about the project, visit www.cca.qc.ca/A305.
Television broadcast 18 examines the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, who Amyas Connell one said would ultimately be regarded as the greatest English architect of the twentieth century. When we think of the way British architecture was purged of its former traditional romantic expression by modernists such as Connell, this viewpoint may appear curious. In looking at Deanery Gardens, Sonning (1899), Dr. Geoffrey Baker here notes Lutyens’s empirical approach to planning and discerns a supremely English character in Lutyens’s work.
Written by Geoffrey Baker, directed by Edward Hayward, produced the BBC/Open University, aired 16 August 1975 on BBC2.

[@BobbyReed]

Marvelous.

[@Knoyle1632]

Sir Edwin Lutyens was a great man, a great architect, a Genius !!

[@RoseMary-vs3io]

😜😆🤣

[@luzzermcluz]

Thanks for posting this. I went to school in a Sonning for years, and the Deanery always fascinated me. But never thought I’d actually get a look inside!

[@Knoyle1632]

This house, this garden...it's a dream !!

[@agingflowerchild]

It is hard for modern people to imagine that this house was built for a world that was lit (and heated) only by fire, in a part of the world that can be quite dark and cold much of the year. Lutyens is considering not just visual and spacial experiences, but also some practical problems which are very different from our own.

[@MisterJeffy]

The video was shot without a wide angle lens, so it shows details of some of the interiors but never the whole. The charming anecdotes and descriptions reveal very little about the architecture.

[@seeingmullions]

Do you have any recommendations for videos that go into more architectural detail with good visuals? I’ve found the mix of anecdotes and visuals in this series to be most helpful

[@galas062]

thank you for all of these architecture videos.....

[@Knoyle1632]

A very good doc !!

[@mirzafawazbaig724]

Edward lutyans DELHI building STRUCTURE LOVE IT

[@muhammadjafni789]

came here for assigment

[@GriefTourist]

Jimmy Page has owned this for decades I believe. Probably bought it not long after this was broadcast. I never realised there was a door right on the street, hopefully it has good security as Jimmy attracts some very warped people.

[@johnmm]

Now home, I believe, of Jimmy Page (founder of Led Zeppelin)

[@georgiacristea]

Fortunately not. he owns The Tower House _en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tower_House

[@alanhesketh9265]

@@georgiacristea He also owns Deanery Gardens, as well as The tower House and previously owned The old Mill House in Windsor, Boleskine House overlooking Loch Ness and Plumpton Place in Sussex.

[@georgiacristea]

@@alanhesketh9265 _Thank you!

[@colinallen8924]

@@georgiacristea, why "fortunately not"?

[@dragonmartijn]

@@colinallen8924Maybe because people don’t want satanic rituals in such a beautiful house?

[@margaretpepper3550]

Suburb, simply suburb....

[@robertjohns6008]

9:03 Ah yes, the immediate question of if we can take Lutyens seriously... A better question is whether we can take seriously someone with such misguided inquiry. The whole time he's trying to come off as an objective authority, but he can't get out hardly a single sentence of commentary without evident bias and disdain for this assignment he's been forced to carry out. Modernist misanthropic martian of a man.

[@SilojensenDK]

Hi there, You’ve got it all wrong. Dr. Baker explains why you can’t fault Lutyens for not being a modernist, as so many modernists did later on, when writing off great architects of the pre-modern era as “medieval” and therefore irrelevant. This was very much the case in the 1970’s when the program was made. Baker then proceeds to demonstrate how great Lutyens was as an architect:
1. Can we take him seriously? Baker answers that Lutyens was never a part of any modernist movement, which was long after his time. In fact, only Macintosh on the British isles had the modernist spirit as it was defined post WWI. So yes - we should take Lutyens seriously.
2. How good was he? Presenter goes on to explain the brilliant layout of the house plans and intricate relationship of house and garden with every angle and detail thought through down to the last rain gutter. So yes, he was in fact great.
This whole program’s purpose is to bring to light the brilliance of Lutyens in a time of international modernism and “verfremdung.”