'The hollow victory' of modern architecture and the quest for the vernacular: J. M. Richards and 'the functional tradition'

Abstract

Introduction Modernism and anonymity have remained largely irreconcilable, especially in the fi eld of architecture. As the omnipotent symbol of creativity and artistic power, the personality of the nineteenth-century Romantic artist defi ned the transgressive nature of his early twentieth-century avant-garde successor, while nurturing the emergence of the celebrity architect. Valuing authorship above anonymity, the cult(ure) of avantgardism has invested the modern artist with the power to see beyond culture and tradition to generate cultural transformation. It is peculiar, then, to see that one of the chief editors of the leading modern architecture journals of Britain, J. M. Richards, wrote extensively on the idea of anonymity and the value of vernacular architectures.