page_title: Giles Gilbert Scott
section_title: 1930s
hierarchical_section_title: Giles Gilbert Scott / Life and career / 1930s
caption_attribution_description: English: Exterior shot of main UL building
context_page_description: Sir Giles Gilbert Scott OM RA FRIBA was an English architect known for his work on the Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and designing the iconic red telephone box. Scott came from a family of architects. He was noted for his blending of Gothic tradition with modernism, making what might otherwise have been functionally designed buildings into popular landmarks.
context_section_description: In 1930 the London Power Company engaged Scott as consulting architect for its new electricity generating station at Battersea. The building was designed by the company's chief engineer, Leonard Pearce, and Scott's role was to enhance the external appearance of the massive architecture. He opted for external brickwork, put some detailing on the sheer walls, and remodelled the four corner chimneys so that they resembled classical columns. Battersea Power Station, opened in 1933 but disused since 1982, remains one of the most conspicuous industrial buildings in London. At the time of its opening, The Observer, though expressing some reservations about details of Scott's work, called it "one of the finest sights in London". In a poll organised by The Architectural Review in 1939 to find what lay people thought were Britain's best modern buildings, Battersea Power Station was in second place, behind the Peter Jones building.
  In Cambridge, next to Clare College's Memorial Court, Scott designed the enormous library for the entire University of Cambridge. He placed two six-storey courtyards in parallel with a twelve-storey tower in the centre, and linked the windows vertically to the bookstacks. The main reading room measured nearly 2,000 feet (610 m) by 41 feet (12 m) and 31 feet (9.4 m) high, lit by 25 round-headed clerestory windows on each side. At the time of its opening in 1934, The Times commented that the building displayed "the same enjoyment of modelling in mass which is Sir Giles Scott's chief personal contribution to contemporary architecture."
  Scott was elected president of the Royal Institute of British Architects for 1933, its centenary year (having already been awarded the RIBA's prestigious Royal Gold Medal in 1925). In his presidential address he urged colleagues to adopt what he called "a middle line": to combine the best of tradition with a fresh modern approach, to eschew dogma, and recognise "the influence of surroundings on the choice of materials and the technique of their use. … My plea is for a frank and common-sense acceptance of those features and materials which are practical and beautiful, regardless as to whether they conform with the formula of either the modern or the traditional school."
  From 1937 to 1940, Scott worked on the New Bodleian Library, in Broad Street in Oxford. It is not generally considered his finest work. Needing to provide storage for millions of books without building higher than the surrounding structures, he devised a construction going deep into the earth, behind two elevations no higher than those around them. His biographer A S G Butler commented, "In an attempt to be polite to these – which vary from late Gothic to Victorian Tudor – Scott produced a not very impressive neo-Jacobean design". A later biographer, Gavin Stamp, praises the considerable technical achievement of keeping the building low in scale by building underground, but agrees that aesthetically the building is not among Scott's most successful. Nikolaus Pevsner dismisses it as "neither one thing nor the other".
caption: Cambridge University Library, opened in 1934
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