ABSTRACT
Following significant periods overseas, Fry and Drew began to consolidate their London practice in the 1950s and undertook projects that are perhaps the most overlooked of their lengthy careers. Fry and Drew returned home in 1953 and 1954 respectively, their international reputations at an all-time high following prestigious work implementing CIAM strategy with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in Chandigarh. Drew took time out from India to participate in the ninth CIAM Congress at Aix-en-Provence, which was held in July 1953. She contributed to proceedings with a presentation of recent work undertaken at Chandigarh with Fry and Staff Architect N.S. Lamba, 1 which focused on the city’s low-cost housing provision and illustrates her continued interest in a reductive Modernism that addressed the need for basic accommodation. CIAM 9 was the largest of the group’s congresses, with a 500-strong delegation from 31 countries and ‘observers numbering in the thousands’. 2 Amongst the group was the British architect Gordon Graham, who (more than 40 years later) recalled his first encounter with Drew:
The courtyard was full of chatter and conversation as individuals or small groups drank coffee in the shade of the plane trees, studied exhibition panels that had overflowed into the courtyard or began to arrange themselves into semi-formal discussion groups to get down to some serious work. Suddenly, I swear, the buzz of conversation and movement seemed to halt for a split second. The momentary silence, my memory tells me, coincided with the appearance on a first floor balcony of a figure adorned in a brightly coloured magnificent silk pyjama-suit and wearing the most enormous straw coolie-hat I had ever seen. The buzz of the background noise resumed as a wrought iron staircase down to ground level was elegantly negotiated with no apparent risk to the coolie-hat. Jane had arrived from Chandigarh for the Congress. It was an entrance of quite staggering star quality. I shall never ever forget it. 3
