Godfrey, Walter H.
Our building inheritance. Are we to use it or lose it?
London, Faber and Faber Limited 1945.
Full Description
8vo. 87+(1)pp, 104 photo plates. Publisher’s cloth. Roderick Gradidge’s copy (bookplate and ink ownership inscription dated 1946).
An attempt to influence post-war planners and rebuilding committees by the scholarly architect Walter Godfrey (1881-1961), who stresses the importance of the English building tradition while admitting the need to standardise to an extent, while sounding sensible warnings on such things as allowing “cheapness to override efficiency”, which he feared could recreate the slums of the past, and neglecting to maintain and repair buildings leading to a loss of ‘morale’ in residential areas, both of which lessons were subsequently largely ignored in the post-war rebuilding programme.