MARS Group

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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 actually 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 Tecton, another architectural group, by Ove Arup and by John Betjeman, a poet and contributor to Architectural Review. At its height there were about 58 members in the group. The group's greatest success came in 1938 with a show at the New Burlington Galleries, but it also unfortunately left them in debt. 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.