Modern Architectural Research Group

The Modern Architectural Research Group, or MARS Group, was a British architectural think tank founded in 1933 by several prominent architects and architectural critics of the time involved in the British modernist movement. The MARS Group came after several previous but unsuccessful attempts at creating an organization to support modernist architects in Britain such as those that had been formed on continental Europe, like the Union des Artistes Modernes in France. The group first formed when Sigfried Giedion of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne asked Morton Shand to assemble a group that would represent Britain at their events. Shand, along with Wells Coates, chose Maxwell Fry and F. R. S. Yorke as the founding members. They were also joined by a few members of architectural group Tecton, by Ove Arup and by John Betjeman, a poet and contributor to Architectural Review. In 1936, Tecton members William Tatton Brown, his wife Aileen and the proprietor of Architectural Press, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, formed a three-strong 'Town Planning Committee' within CIAM exploring ideas related to 'linear cities'; Tatton Brown subsequently presented a paper based on the work, The Theory of Contacts and its Application to the Future of London, at the CIAM V Congress in Paris in September 1937. However, this work was subsequently regarded as a "a preliminary survey of London by a section of the MARS Group", and a new and larger Town Planning Committee was convened under Arthur Korn's leadership in December 1937 to produce what turned out to be a heavily revised plan for London. The group's greatest success came in 1938 with a show at the New Burlington Galleries, but it also left them in debt. The MARS group proposed a radical plan for the redevelopment of postwar London, the details of which were published the Architectural Review in 1942. At its height there were about 58 members in the group. The group itself began to lose steam along with the movement and many members left as a result of creative differences. The group finally disbanded in 1957.