Lutyens Finnished Presentation

Edwin Lutyens 1869 - 1944

The Life and Times of Edwin Lutyens

• Presented by:

• Barry Jackson

• Simon A Lunn

• Tom Pugh


• Who was Edwin Lutyens

• Country houses

• Commercial and public buildings

• War Memorials

Today we will talk about


Who Was Edwin Lutyens

• Edwin Landseer Lutyens was born in London, in 1869, the 11th of 14 children.

• As a boy he developed an appreciation of the materials and complex shapes of the cottages and barns found in has native Surrey.

• At 16 Lutyens attended the South Kensington School of design (Later the Royal College of Art) to study architecture.


Who Was Edwin Lutyens• At 18 he joined Ernest George a talented pupil of the

famous architect Norman Shaw. The influence of Shaw and the English Arts and Crafts Movement became the foundation of Lutyens' early career.

• After just over a year with Ernest George, at the age of 20, Lutyens inherited £100.00 and was able to set up his own office in Grays Inn Square London.

• At the time, he met Gertrude Jekyll, the famous landscape architect who eventually collaborated on of many of his commissions.

• At the beginning of his career, Lutyens married Lady Emily, sister of the 2nd Earl of Lytton.



• Lutyens established a national reputation early in his career by designing rambling, picturesque houses for the English nouveau riche

• An important feature of these houses is the integration with romantically conceived gardens, frequently designed in collaboration with the famous Gertrude Jekyll.

• In fact, his first major house, Mustead Wood, in Surrey, was designed for Jekyll, a close personal friend of Lutyens who did much to promote his career.


Who Was Edwin Lutyens• At Munstead Wood, Lutyens first showed his personal

qualities as a designer that made his reputation.

• Munstead Wood marked the beginning of Lutyens "Surrey period." A brilliant series of country houses followed in which Lutyens adapted varied styles of the past to the demands of contemporary domestic architecture.

• In 1898 through Gertrude Jekyll’s brother, Sir Herbert Jekyll, Lutyens was commissioned to design the British Pavilion for the Paris Exposition of 1900.

• This led to a new client Guillaume Mallet, for whom Lutyens built a number of houses in France.


Who Was Edwin Lutyens• After 1900 his portfolio of work became much more

varied

• One of Lutyens' most inventive houses is Deanery Gardens in, Berkshire (1899), designed for Edward Hudson, founder of Country Life, a magazine to which Jekyll contributed numerous articles.

• In contrast to the romance of his earlier houses, Lutyens increasingly began to incorporate a strong sense of classical balance, symmetry, and order in his designs.

• His first exercise in Neo-Classical style was the commission for Heathcoate in Yorkshire .This was a marked move away from his earlier works.


Who Was Edwin Lutyens• 1900 Paris expo

• 1911 Rome Expo (British School in Rome)

• 1912 Delhi Planning Commission to design the New Colonial Capital of India (Moved from Calcutta)

• 1917 Was appointed as a principle architect for the Imperial War Graves Commission memorials


• Munstead Wood

• Deanery Gardens (Country Life)

• Heathcote

• Le Bois de Moutier

Country Houses


Munstead Wood

• Commissioned by a close friend of Lutyens, Gertrude Jekyll, a garden designer.

• U-shaped design around a formal water garden.

• Carefully designed with consideration of the garden.


Munstead Wood


Deanery Gardens

• Built within a walled garden.

• ‘Perfect architectural sonnet’.

• Set by idyllic back waters of the Thames.


Heathcote

• Edwardian Baroque Style.

• ‘Rogue fitting into main stream English architecture.’

• Lutyens wasn’t trying to design within the limitations

of the vernacular.


Le Bois de Moutier

• Built around the existing ‘dull rectangular brick house’ already on the site.

• ‘A house of considerable originality.’

• Asymmetrically balanced.


Le Bois de Moutier


Le Bois de Moutier


Le Bois de Moutier


• British Pavilion Paris Expo 1900

• British School Rome

• New Delhi

Commercial and Public Buildings


British Pavilion Paris Expo

• Exposition secretary was Gertrude Jekyll's brother, Colonel Herbert Jekyll.

• Secured further work in France.

• Britain had to rethink attitude to expo presentation.


Rome Expo - British School• Lord Lytton, Lutyens brother in law, was the Chairman

of The Royal Commission in Rome.

• Started as a temporary building then changed to permanent after the expo.

• Sir Christopher Wrenis a large influence.


New Delhi - Colonial Capital• Lutyens was appointed to the Delhi Planning Commission

in 1912.

• It was decided to move the capital of India from Calcutta to a new purpose build city, called ‘New Delhi’.

• Lutyens made 19 trips to India in the time of this project.


• The Great War

• Cenotaph

• Memorial to the Missing of the Somme

• All India War Memorial Arch New Delhi

War Memorials


The Great War 1914 - 1918

• A whole generation of young men where lost.

• Lutyens was appointed as principal architect for the Imperial War Graves Commission in 1917, when it was set up.

• He designed war memorials all over the world from Norway to Sri Lanka.


The Cenotaph

• Lutyens was commissioned to design a temporary memorial for the victory parade.

• Everyone remarked that a more permanent memorial should be erected.

• This was unveiled on the 11th November 1920.


The Missing of the Somme• This memorial, Thieval Memorial arch, was erected in

1924.

• A memorial to the 73,357 missing in the Somme.

• Sums up in one building all that was best in architecture in Britain before it was destroyed.

Edwin Lutyens 1869 - 1944All India Memorial Arch - Delhi

• Stands at the end of the pathway to Viceroys House.

• 138 feet ( 42 metres) tall.

• Three dimensional roman arch.


‘In England up to 1939 Sir Edwin Lutyens towered above all other architects of his generation, just as his contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright, did in America.

Thought out his long and prolific career, in which he was involved with every kind of commission from cottage design to town planning, he was a master of spatial play, whether in his freely-planned organic houses hugging the soil, or in his public, commercial and ecclesiastical buildings.’fkjghdjkfhgkjhdfsgA History Of Western Architecture, David Watkin, Barrie & Jenkins, 1986



Thank you For Your Attention

• Barry Jackson

• Simon A Lunn

• Tom Pugh

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