Context 167 - March 2021

8 C O N T E X T 1 6 7 : M A R C H 2 0 2 1 built form. Eiffel had argued that the unusual profile originated in structural necessity rather than any aesthetic consideration, having sold the form of the tower as a compelling structural analogue to the resistance of loads. The curved silhouette was declared a result of detailed structural analysis to resist the significant (but as yet unknown) wind loads of the world’s (then) tallest tower. The paper is a rigorous and thoughtful reflection on how engineering and design decisions are made. For those wrestling with the concepts of authenticity in 20th-century historic buildings and the retention of historic fittings, Thomas Leslie’s paper on fluorescent lamps. Often cursed and dismissed as banal designs, they have nevertheless become a defining feature of contemporary workspaces. The author demonstrates how 19th-century technology evolved into new lighting concepts in the 1930s. Ubiquitous in the post- war era, with a growing demand in high-rise office buildings in particular, fluorescent lamps emitted more light but less heat, and they could be successfully integrated with suspended ceilings, alongside mechanical ventilation. Joaquin Fernandez Madrid describes the use of the ventilated facade and rainscreen wall as an independent system between 1950 and 1965. A carefully traced chronology is established. The work of the system’s inventors illustrates how technological innovation and change in construction is not a linear (or particularly straightforward) process. Also of interest is a study focusing on the construction materials, scaffolding and technology applied to churches, ranging from the 11th to 16th centuries in medieval Spain. The paper traces findings such as putlog holes and calculations of the quantities of construction materials through virtual modelling. It identifies new and significant interdependencies between the compactness/lightness of scaffoldings, the improvement of lifting machinery, and the shift from massive vaults to lighter rib vaulting techniques, offering an explanation for the decline in the use of scaffolding embedded in walls as putlog holes. The Construction Historian The Construction Historian (Issue 6, Winter 2020) has gone from strength to strength in its short life, and displays high production values. Of particular interest is the article by Tim Meek. In quoting John Ruskin’s dictum ‘The true colours of architecture are those of natural stone’, Meek makes a forceful and well- illustrated argument that bare stone is not sustainable now or in a climate-changed future. The author introduces a research programmed funded by Historic Scotland and the University of Stirling into a counter future for heritage masonry buildings, where they are rendered seamless by lime coatings. He states that the misinterpretation of former building practices, and the imposition of notions of ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’ relative to the naturalistic beauty of bare materials in general, have resulted in repair strategies that are based on opinion rather than evidence. This revisionist argument is well worth seeking out. The Victorian In TheVictorian (No 65, November 2020) Lynne Walker, senior research fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, focuses on women’s roles in Victorian architecture as designer-maker and client-patron before they overcame exclusion from official professional recognition in 1898. The majority of women participating in architecture before the first world war did so outside professional practice.Walker highlights the career of Sarah Losh, designer of St Mary’s Church,Wreay, Cumbria (listed Grade II*) as a notable example. Also emphasised is the extension into the 19th century of the long tradition of architectural patronage by wealthy and elite women, among more numerous affluent and educated middle-class women donors and clients. The era also saw the emergence of the client-architect and the patron-builder, particularly when associated with women’s health care and public affairs. Complementary articles are provided by Elizabeth Crawford, a leading historian of women’s suffrage, who highlights the buildings that form landmarks in one of the most important political campaigns of the Victorian and Edwardian age; and Laura Fitzmaurice, who looks at the challenges facing women architects in the 1890s and early 1900s, using the early career of Clotilde Brewster, one of whose designs is the Palazzo Soderini in Rome of 1901. Brewster had a talent for restorations of older houses. She carried out sensitive projects at Stonehill in Sussex and Beckley Park, Oxfordshire, where she displayed considerably more talent than her husband Percy Fielding, both articled assistants in Reginald Blomfield’s London office. The VicSoc notes, as you may also care to, the recent formation of the Decimus Burton Society, devoted to one of the great figures of 19th century architecture, design and urban planning. The new society has a website: thedecimusburtonsociety.org . Bob Kindred MBE