In a rather controversial essay in 1942 the architectural historian John Summerson compared the routes of an architecture graduate in 1925 with one in 1935. In 1925 “the prospect looked something like this. You passed your final examination and entered the office of an FRIBA … in 10 years… perhaps a partnership. But, with luck you would not have to wait for that. An uncle or friend… would step in with a commission… From this you ‘worked up a practice’. You put up a brass plate. You won a competition or two. You made good.”

By 1935 however: “Behind him [female architects being apparently somewhat of an anathema at the time] was the depression of 1929-31, an event which caused the vista of private practice to shrink horribly and any glamour it had retained to become very dim… unless his parents could supply a resilient background, he had to be more of a realist. It was almost fanciful to pursue the brass-plate ideal, though it might be precariously achieved by a group of friends tacking half-a-dozen modest plates under a single bell-push. But there was an alternative – permanent salaried employment.”

The “brass-plate ideal” is never one I’ve really hankered after myself. However it is arguably receding further and further into the realm of fantasy for the rising generation of architects than even for those 1935 graduates.

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