Back Issues At the time of their conception, pylons met with little opposition in the architectural press, says Steve Parnell

摘要

John Betjeman's 1966 poem Inexpensive Progress begins 'Encase your legs in nylons / Bestride your hills with pylons / O age without a soul'. A champion of preservation in the 1960s, Betjeman was the assistant editor of the Architectural Review between 1930 and 1935. It was in the AR's pages, between March and May 1935, that one W A Eden wrote a polemic against the spread of towns by ribbon development along the new 'octopus tentacle' roads and how 'the English tradition in the countryside' might be preserved through its progressive development. His Corbusian strategy of using the latest technologies and building Modern, dense blocks of flats would benefit the populace and leave the countryside untouched. For example, today we couldn't even conceive of his proposal to replace Blenheim Palace with a Modernist block of flats. He also claimed that the electricity pylon was 'one of the few fine additions to the landscape of modern times'.