Discourses, ephemeral sources and architectural history: personality and the personal in the story of J.M. Richards

This chapter, which was written with input from the book’s editors, is based on a paper Kelly delivered at a the Society of Architectural Historians Conference in 2016 on the subject of oral history in architectural history. It is an exploration of the methodological and historiographical significance of Kelly's use of oral history sources in her doctoral research on the career of J.M. Richards. As such it contributes to the edited volume, which is the first to comprehensively examine the theoretical and ontological significance of oral history as a research method and a critical tool in architectural historiography. The chapter explores the diversity of the oral history sources in Kelly's research, which ranged from informal chats with Richards' family and former colleagues, to notes made from recorded interviews and a card index made during an oral history project in the 1970s. Kelly discusses her methodology, which was based on the concept of discourses, and explains how it related to this diversity of sources. The chapter is sub-titled ‘personality and the personal’ because Kelly reflects on how the sources revealed the intangible and personal dimensions of Richards’ work as an editor, which added breadth and depth to the historical understanding of the types of work that contributed to mid-twentieth century architectural culture. Kelly also unpacks how these oral sources correlated Richards’ position in architecture with his individual personality. She explains how rather than seeking to reconstruct a ‘real’ personality, her methodology used people’s perceptions of Richards’ personality as a tool to re-assess the criteria for what types of people and what types of activity warranted historical attention. The chapter reveals how Kelly's PhD produced a narrative beyond individual creatively in architecture, which considers the networks and collaborations that made up the complex web of architectural culture. This is aligned with the book’s aim to challenge to the singularity of the architect as the one who speaks for and about buildings. The book was shortlisted for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Colvin Award.