Overview

This book is about the architecture and design of broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s, examining the buildings which the BBC occupied in its founding decades, with a particular focus on Broadcasting House in London. It argues that these environments were as constitutive of the Corporation’s identity as the programmes and people that they housed. Borrowing from the architectural writer Christopher Hussey’s characterisation of Broadcasting House as a ‘palace of the ether’ Elizabeth Darling asks how the immaterial medium of the broadcast was given material and spatial form by the BBC, and the engineers, architects and designers whom they commissioned. The book traces the development of the BBC both technologically and organisationally, and the changing demands it had of the spaces which accommodated it. It shows how associational networks and personal affiliations affected who was commissioned to work on what became Broadcasting House and offers a detailed account of the work of Val Myer, who designed the exterior and shell of the new building, and the team of architects who designed the studio interiors (Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, Edward Maufe, Raymond McGrath and Dorothy Warren). In documenting the design of Broadcasting House, and the responses to it, Palace of the Ether offers new insights into British architectural culture at a pivotal moment in the profession’s history.

Full Product Details

9781848227057

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Elizabeth Darling's clever, readable and meticulously researched book recognises the BBC's 1932 Broadcasting House as a vital lens through which to view a new Britain struggling to be born. Her account of the building's revolutionary but long-lost radio studios - their genre-keyed designs; the network of modernists and traditionalists charged with creating them - is a pleasure from start to finish.' - George Entwistle, former Director-General of the BBC 'What a wonderful and extraordinary book! Palace of the Ether is so much more than the simple story of a building. By delving inside the minds of the architects and designers who made Broadcasting House one of the world's most iconic structures, Darling has turned what could have been a tale of stones and studios into a brilliant and gripping blend of architecture, biography, broadcasting history and cultural analysis, and the result is an exhilarating journey deep into the spirit of 1930s Modernist Britain.' - David Hendy, author of The BBC: A People's History.

'Elizabeth Darling's clever, readable and meticulously researched book recognises the BBC's 1932 Broadcasting House as a vital lens through which to view a new Britain struggling to be born. Her account of the building's revolutionary but long-lost radio studios - their genre-keyed designs; the network of modernists and traditionalists charged with creating them - is a pleasure from start to finish.' - George Entwistle, former Director-General of the BBC

Author Information

Elizabeth Darling is a leading architectural historian, and specialises in histories of modernist cultures in Britain, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. Among her extensive range of publications are Re-forming Britain (Routledge, 2007) and Wells Coates (RIBA, 2012).

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