Etchells, Frederick

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Etchells, Frederick (1886–1973). English architect and painter. He was a pioneer of International Modernism, as is evident from his Crawford's Advertising Building, 223 High Holborn, London (1929–30). With chamfered corners, long uninterrupted bands of windows subdivided by steel mullions, and white cement-rendered walls, it was one of the earliest paradigms of the style to be built in England. Etchells also designed 38 Chapel Street, Westminster (1934), and several buildings on the Grosvenor Estate, Westminster. He is best remembered for translating Le Corbusier's Vers une architecture into English as Towards a New Architecture (1927) and Urbanisme as The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (1929): the changes of titles enhanced the messianic and polemical nature of the texts. With the Dean of Chester, George William Outram Addleshaw (1906–82), he wrote The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (1948), a thoughtful book that became a classic. He was also a publisher and typographer.

Bibliography

Etchells (1947, 1989);
Etchells and Addleshaw (1948)

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