Trystan Edwards

Arthur Trystan Edwards FRIBA FRTPI FRGS (10 November 1884 – 30 January 1973) was a Welsh architectural critic, town planner and amateur cartographer. He was a noted critic of the garden city movement.[1]

Born in Merthyr Tydfil, he was educated at Clifton College, Bristol,[2] and Hertford College, Oxford. He studied under the architect Sir Reginald Blomfield as an articled pupil[3] from 1907[4] and was enrolled at the Liverpool School of Architecture's department of civic design from 1911 to 1913.[5] In 1913 he returned to London and worked for the firm of Richardson and Gill; during this period his first architectural criticism was published in the Architects' and Builders' Journal.[5] He served in the Royal Navy from 1915 to 1918 and continued his involvement with the Navy into peacetime, serving for twelve years in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.[5]

At the close of World War I Edwards joined the Ministry of Health and resumed his architectural criticism. The Things which are Seen: a Revaluation of the Visual Arts was published in 1921 and Good and Bad Manners in Architecture, which is considered to be his best work, in 1924.[5] John Betjeman noted that the latter work was "the first book to draw attention after the Great War to Regency architecture and to deplore the destruction of Nash's Regent Street."[6] In 1933 Edwards founded the Hundred New Towns Association, which was ultimately unsuccessful in its aims.[3] In 1953 he published A New Map of the World, in which he proposed his "homalographic" projection.[5]

  1. ^ Christopher Crouch (2002). Design Culture in Liverpool, 1880–1914: The Origins of the Liverpool School of Architecture. Liverpool University Press. pp. 174–. ISBN 978-0-85323-894-2.
  2. ^ "Clifton College Register" Muirhead, J.A.O. ref no 5434: Bristol; J.W Arrowsmith for Old Cliftonian Society; April, 1948
  3. ^ a b Richards, J. M. "Edwards, (Arthur) Trystan". Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
  4. ^ Evans, Raymond Wallis. "Edwards, Arthur Trystan". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
  5. ^ a b c d e Goulden, Gontran; Saint, Andrew (2004). "Edwards, (Arthur) Trystan (1884–1973)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31062. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ Betjeman, John (1986). Ghastly Good Taste. National Trust Classics. London: Century. p. xxi. ISBN 9780712694629.