Věčný Lutyens? Poznámky ke klasicismu v architektuře 20. a 21. století
Lutyens Forever? Notes on Classicism in Architecture in the 20th and 21st Century

Summary/Abstract: The paper is a tribute to the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens on the occasion of his 140th birth anniversary. Lutyens was an important follower of classicism who worked in the first half of the 20th century and later has been received by critics and historians rather ambiguously. First part of the article presents Lutyens’ biography. The second part is reviewing some of the recent British and American estimations of Lutyens’ work advocating its value, attraction and exemplariness. The third part deals with particular questions and preliminary conclusions concerning the fate of classicist architectural tradition in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia in relation to the previous parts of the contribution. EDWIN LANDSEER LUTYENS (29 March, 1869, London – 1 January 1944, London) Edwin Lutyens came from a large family of Charles Lutyens, a soldier and painter, and his wife Mary. His education in architecture was limited to one year stay at the Kensington School of Art and two years working experience in Ernest George and Harold Peto’s office. Thus for the most part he was a self-educated architect. Lutyens’ career was significantly influenced by travelling throughout the English countryside; it was supported by his relatives and friends. Some of them later participated in his projects, in particular an architect Herbert Baker and a garden architect Gertrude Jekyll. Since 1889 Lutyens started to work on his own projects. Initially he designed family houses (often in collaboration with Jekyll); only after 1900 he started to work on the projects of city buildings. His designs of country houses in Arts and Crafts style gained great popularity. Lutyens’ career was improving, in contrast to his marriage with Lady Emily Lytton, the daughter of the former viceroy of India. When in 1903 Lutyens received first orders for the buildings in the centre of London, he turned to classicism. In particular, he found an inspiration in buildings by Christopher Wren as well as in Italian architecture of the 16th century. He combined those impulses with shapes and materials of English vernacular architecture with great originality. Since 1908 he had participated in the design of Hampstead garden suburb. Lutyens also proved his skilfulness in planning the new capital of India, New Delhi (1911 – 1931); it was the architect’s key commission. After the First World War Lutyens designed memorials and cemeteries of war victims in England and abroad. In London he projected the large office buildings for the private corporations (The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, The Midland Bank). Despite occasional usage of modernist methods he remained in the framework of „humanistic” traditional forms and technologies. In Lutyens’ projects of war monuments (for instance, Thiepval in France) and especially in the unexecuted design for the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool he shifted towards a synthesis of styles, an abstract classicism without any reference to particular styles.

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