Andrew Richard Lang. 9 September 1924—30 June 2008

Andrew Lang will be remembered internationally for having developed the technique of X-ray topography which enables individual defects, such as dislocations, stacking faults, small angle boundaries and magnetic domains, to be imaged in many different types of materials. His interests spanned the whole range of dislocation studies and he made many important contributions to advanced instrumentation for X-ray crystallography, including pioneering experiments with a synchrotron radiation source. His career began during the last year of the Second World War when he was appointed to a research position at the Unilever Research Laboratories at Port Sunlight, Cheshire. He held research positions at the University of Cambridge, where he completed his PhD, and after a period at the Philips Laboratory in Irvington-on-Hudson in the USA, he obtained a tenured post at Harvard University. He returned to the UK in 1959 as a lecturer at Bristol University, where he was to remain for the rest of his life, being successively promoted to reader and then professor.

Meyer, Hannes (1889–1954)

Hannes Meyer was a Swiss modernist architect, educator, and the second director of the Bauhaus from 1928 to 1930. He believed that architecture and planning are social issues and that modern architects and planners should serve the needs of the masses rather than those of the privileged class. This conviction directed him throughout his entire career. Meyer was born on November 18, 1889, into an architectural dynasty in Basel. He was an apprentice mason and studied building at Basel Technical School for four years before going to Berlin in 1909, where he attended courses on town planning, economics, and land reform. Between 1912 and 1913 Meyer traveled to England, visiting and studying the garden cities of Letchworth, Bourneville, and Port Sunlight. By the time World War I broke out, Meyer had already completed his training in architecture and town planning. During the war he served in the Swiss army. In 1919 Meyer received his first building commission: Freidorf housing estate near Basel, in which he used standardized building elements for the sake of economic efficiency. Meyer was appointed as master of architecture at the Bauhaus in 1927. A year later, he succeeded Walter Gropius as the director of the Dessau Bauhaus. He conducted an extensive reform of the Bauhaus curriculum, stressing practical experience and downplaying personal artistic concerns.

Bournville et Port Sunlight : une utopie qui existe quelque part

Résumé Si l’on postule que l’utopie, ce n’est pas véritablement ce qui n’existe pas : c’est ce qui n’existe pas encore, alors il devient possible d’avancer que les villages de Cadbury (Bournville) et de Lever (Port Sunlight) sont des projets utopiques qui se sont réalisés, contrairement à tant de tentatives avortées au XIXe siècle. Certains diront que puisqu’ils ont survécu, cela veut bien dire qu’ils n’ont jamais relevé de l’utopie : l’article passe en revue les différents arguments et conclut que leur nature utopique est indéniable malgré la contradiction apparente dans les termes.