All roof, no wall: Peter Boston, A-frames, and the Primitive Hut in Twentieth-century British Architecture c. 1890-1970

McKellar, Elizabeth (2019). All roof, no wall: Peter Boston, A-frames, and the Primitive Hut in Twentieth-century British Architecture c. 1890-1970. Architectural History, 62 pp. 237–269.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/arh.2019.9

Abstract

A very particular type of modern house in Britain — A-frames of the 1950s and 1960s — emerged from a much longer history of British and Scandinavian-German primitivism centred on the cruck-frame. This article focuses on a small number of architect-designed examples and introduces one of the main proponents of the type, Peter Boston (1918–99). The tension between the A-frame's familiarity as a universal dwelling type and its adoption as a signifier of modernity is a central theme. In the British twentieth-century context, the ‘modern’ included a strong vernacular element, and the new A-frames, which formed part of the ‘timber revival’ of the 1950s and 1960s, were informed by a long-standing interest in the history of cruck-framed construction from the Arts and Crafts onwards, which in turn was part of a wider pan-north European building culture.

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