The other tradition

Overview

In television broadcast 21, Geoffrey Baker examines the persistence of academic classicism in British architecture of the 1920s and 1930s, exemplified in such buildings as Manchester City Library and Liverpool Cathedral. Despite growing support during the 1930s for the ideology of the Modern Movement, examples of the style were comparatively rare in Britain. Focusing on the new headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects, built during the 1930s, Geoffrey Baker shows how conservative traditions were modified by modernist tastes.