Folk Architecture & The Future

Committee for Folk Architecture, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Veszprém

  We are very much looking forward to the forthcoming international conference “From Traditions to the Future” (“A Hagyományoktól a Jövőig”), which will take place in the city of Veszprém in western Hungary at the end of August 2023.  We have been invited to present a paper entitled “What Hope for Contemporary Architecture”, developing themes of the integrated life of the vernacular builders, and how today’s architects and craftspeople might hope to tap into this source of power and beauty, combining not only design and craft, but food and life in total.

As part of our paper, we will explore some lessons of the Arts & Crafts of Britain, particularly two examples where architect and builder were so close that they were one seamless group – Ernest Gimson and Geoffrey Lupton at Bedales School Memorial Library (Hampshire), and W.R. Lethaby and Randall Wells at All Saints’ Church, Brockhampton (Herefordshire) – in our view, two of the finest twentieth-century buildings in England.

We are indebted in particular to Bedales School for their kind permission to survey and photograph their Memorial Library.

You can read more about the forthcoming conference on their website.