1951 Exhibition of Architecture
1951 Exhibition of Architecture

Author: Harding McGregor Dunnett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-22

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1351390937

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The Festival of Britain is perhaps best known for its South Bank Exhibition promoting British science and art to the post-war world, but one of the most important elements was the Architecture Exhibition, based in Poplar in East London. This exhibition was used to demonstrate the principles of modern town planning that had been laid out by Abercrombie, in particular in his County of London Plan. The project was named after George Lansbury, the Labour MP, London County Council (LCC) member and Poplar councillor. It was an effective demonstration of planning ideas adopted since the 1930s by influential planners, taking the village as a model and retaining the terraced house as a housing option among medium rise flats. Small squares and open spaces were favoured, with paved pedestrian spaces, all at lower than pre-war densities. The guide is revealing of the broader thinking in English planning in the mid century. It provides an opportunity for looking at conflicts among advocates of different planning ideas in the period of reconstruction and the move by architects to regain control of LCC housing from the Valuer’s Department. It offers the model of integrated professional specialisms that was seen as central to Modernism’s mission. It is also an opportunity to describe in more detail the interaction of different professions, including, for example, a sociologist, employed by the LCC in the creation of a model for reconstruction.

Estates
Estates

Author: Lynsey Hanley

Publisher: Granta Books

Published: 2012-11-01

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1847088023

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Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, and she has lived for years on an estate in London's East End. Writing with passion, humour and a sense of history, she recounts the rise of social housing a century ago, its adoption as a fundamental right by leaders of the social welfare state in the mid-century and its decline - as both idea and reality - in the 1960s and '70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning and changing government policies - from Homes Fit for Heroes to Le Corbusier's concrete tower blocks, to the Right to Buy - affected those so often left out of the argument over council estates: the millions of people who live on them. What emerges is a vivid mix of memoir and social history, an engaging and illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.

England’s Co-operative Movement
England’s Co-operative Movement

Author: Lynn Pearson

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2020-09-30

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1800859015

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The neighbourhood co-op store was an essential element in the English shopping landscape for a century and more. Initially identified by the iconic co-operative symbols of beehives and wheatsheaves, eclectic store designs by local architects made a lasting impact on the townscape. Robustly independent local co-operative societies and lack of overall branding happily produced an unusually diverse range of architectural styles. And they were much more than just shops – their integrated educational facilities, libraries and halls made them a focal point for communities. The Co-op eventually offered a ‘cradle to grave’ service for its members. Behind the network of stores was the Co-operative Wholesale Society, the federal body responsible for manufacturing and distribution. Its factories employed thousands during the productive peak of the 1930s, and its architects brought modern design standards to bear on the whole gamut of co-op buildings. Co-op architecture is still around us countrywide, with everything from Victorian edifices to post-war artworks there to be seen and enjoyed. Using a wonderful selection of archive and modern illustrations, this book reveals the intriguing story behind the co-op’s buildings, from corner shops to vast department stores and innovative industrial structures. Remember, it’s all at the co-op now!

The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation
The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation

Author: Phil Child

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-05-16

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1350423637

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The Labour Party, Housing and Urban Transformation explores how the urban transformation of Britain between 1945 and 1970 was understood politically by the Labour Party. Placing the Labour Party at the centre of the discussion, the book covers the most extensive period of state-led urban change in British history, from the end of the Second World War to the decline of high modernism in the late 1960s. Taking a particular focus on housing to explore the implementation of modernist ideas to drive a far-ranging process of urban transformation in Britain, it challenges conventional understandings of Labour's urban legacy and puts political ideas at the heart of twentieth-century change. Utilising a breadth and range of material, including two distinct sets of archival sources, published secondary material, national legislation and Housing Acts, and various case studies, Child moves seamlessly between the national picture and its local impacts. It also draws from sources which had a crucial influence on political thinking throughout the mid-twentieth century to understand how urban transformation represented for Labour a political vision of the future. A timely contribution both to urban history and to the history of post-war Britain, it challenges existing interpretations of modernism, connects urban change to the political ideas that drove it, and allows us to comprehend the state of urban Britain today.

From the Bomb to the Beatles
From the Bomb to the Beatles

Author: Juliet Gardiner

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

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Traces the cultural and social developments in Britain in the twenty years following the Second World War, from the restricted culture of 1945 to the dawn of heady freedoms in the 1960's. Places emphasis on the design and style of these decades looking at such changes and icons as 'the new look', the Festival of Britain, top-loading washing machines, contemporary furniture, textiles, the mini skirt and the Rolling Stones.

No more giants
No more giants

Author: Jessica Kelly

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2023-01-24

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1526143771

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Architecture is more than buildings and architects. It also involves photographers, writers, advertisers and broadcasters, as well as the people who finance and live in the buildings. Using the career of the critic J. M. Richards as a lens, this book takes a new perspective on modern architecture. Richards served as editor of The Architectural Review from 1937 to 1971, during which time he consistently argued that modernism was integrally linked to vernacular architecture, not through style but through the principle of being an anonymous expression of a time and public spirit. Exploring the continuities in Richards’s ideas throughout his career disrupts the existing canon of architectural history, which has focused on abrupt changes linked to individual ‘pioneers’, encouraging us to think again about who is studied in architectural history and how they are researched.