Raymond Erith: Progressive Classicist 1904-1973

Raymond Erith's fine buildings both echo Soane's restraint and follow the trends of a stripped mid-20th-century classicism. He looked to achieve what he called the true 'economy of means', where labour and materials are used to the best effect. He used traditional means to create original buildings with progressive ideas behind them. "I am not a modernist, but...I agree with the modernists in every way except that I think their brand of modernism is not very good." New colour photographs of this leading British classicist's work by Mark Fiennes accompany four essays on Erith, and a catalogue and bibliography of his work. Quinlan Terry is a practising classicist architect and Lucy Archer, Kenneth Powell and George Saumarez Smith are well known architectural historians.