Architecture, Citizenship, Space
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Architecture, Citizenship, Space: British Architecture from the 1920s to the 1970s PROGRAMME AND ABSTRACTS Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane, Oxford How did individuals and groups concerned with architecture and the built environment respond to, and seek to shape, the challenges and opportunities of twentieth-century life? Engaging with themes such as democracy, citizenship, leisure, culture and new subjectivities, and showcasing scholars at the forefront of emerging methodological approaches to architectural history, this conference considers how key aspects of British modernity informed architectural form and space between the 1920s and the 1970s. The conference theme takes as its starting point the words of Jennie Lee, the newly appointed Minister for the Arts, who, in 1965, spoke of her wish for a Britain that was ‘gayer and more cultivated.’ Lee’s comment accompanied a substantial increase in state funding for the Arts, distributed via quangos such as the Arts Council and the Council for Industrial Design, and addressed a wider context in which certain forms of cultural and recreational activities – and the architectural settings for them – were deemed to have particular value. The idea was especially marked among the political left but represented a consensus: Labour’s 1959 manifesto was entitled Leisure for Living, while the Conservatives that same year published The Challenge of Leisure. Such questions seemed particularly significant given the widespread belief that technological developments would soon result in a shorter working week and an increase in leisure time. In these circumstances, communal high-cultural, educational and sporting activities were possible counterweights to individualism, materialism, and (a perceived) malign American influence. The mid-century concern with culture, leisure and new forms of space had its roots in nineteenth-century ideas of ‘improvement’, particularly as re-worked and refined in the inter- war decades, and took place within a wider context in which certain approaches to design and cultural production were favoured. We can thus distinguish a clear attempt to ‘re-form’ Britain in a new, modern (‘cultured’) image which drew in part on apparently sophisticated European practice but which, as the Architectural Review’s ‘Townscape’ campaigns shows, also drew on consciously ‘British,’ or at least ‘English’ precedents. There was, in effect, an expert-led, ‘technocratic’ approach to modernity, in which the British would be steered in a particular direction through design, architecture and urbanism, and by a range of individuals and groups including not only national and local authorities, but also voluntary organisations and societies. The city emerged as a particular site of debate, with architect-planners creating lively images of a new communal urbanity in terms which paralleled the wider stress on community and leisure. Not only would the result be a transformed citizenry, but also a new image of Britain. Furthermore, as exhibitions such as ‘Britain Can Make It’ (1946) demonstrated, the agenda was also to ensure Britain’s prominence on the world stage. This conference explores how these themes were manifested in architectural discourse, form and space. Its concern is architectural production in the widest sense, encompassing not only completed buildings and unbuilt projects but also texts and the media. The conference addresses an emerging ‘historical turn’ in twentieth-century British architectural history away from primarily formalist accounts of style to something akin to the deeper-rooted, more sophisticated histories of modern art and literature. This new architectural history is rooted in the archive and asks how cultural production functioned as a vehicle through which to explore such ideas as modernity, identity and community. In essence, architecture is conceived as a commentary on these ideas, whether by embracing or resisting them. The conference is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Research Fund of the School of History, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford Brookes University, and is convened by Elizabeth Darling and Alistair Fair. 2 Programme Day One: 15th June 2017 10.30 Arrival and coffee 11.00 Welcome – conference chair, Dr Elizabeth Darling 11.15 Session 1: The Pivotal Decades: Re-thinking Architecture and Nationhood 1918-1939. Theme: This session explores the re-evaluation of the purpose and nature of architecture as Britain entered full democracy. It will consider the development of new idioms of space and form to accommodate this shift. Chair: Professor Elizabeth McKellar (Open University) Dr Elizabeth Darling (Oxford Brookes University): Spaces of Citizenship in inter-war England Dr Jessica Kelly (University for the Creative Arts): Debating Architecture in the Pages of the Architectural Press Dr Neal Shasore (University of Westminster): 66 Portland Place: Refashioning the Profession for a Democratic Age 1.00 Lunch 2.00 Session 2: Educating the Nation after 1945 Theme: A modern nation required an educated citizenry. Kickstarted by the Education Act of 1944, and a baby boom, the post-war years saw a dramatic expansion in educational building. Chair: Professor Mark Swenarton (University of Liverpool) Dr Roy Kozlovsky (Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University): School architecture and the emotional economy of postwar citizenship Dr Catherine Burke (Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge): 'A place which permits the joy in the small things of life and democratic living'. School design for young children in the post - war decades. Professor Louise Campbell (University of Warwick): ‘A background sympathetic to young and energetic minds’: educating modern citizens at the University of Sussex 4.00 Tea and coffee 4.30 Roundtable & Discussion: Architecture, Citizenship, Space – beyond the Academy Municipal Dreams, Manchester Modernist Society, Verity-Jane Keefe (The Mobile Museum). Chaired by Dr Alistair Fair 5.45 Close – Reception 3 Day Two 16th June 2017 9.15 Session 3: Where and How to Live Theme: By 1939 a consensus had emerged that British cities were inadequate to the task of accommodating modern life. Architects and architectural students increasingly sought to promote new models of urban form and dwelling. Chair: Professor John Gold (Oxford Brookes University) Dr Otto Saumarez Smith (University of Oxford): Building for Community in Post-War Britain Dr Christine Hui Lan Manley (Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University/Woods Hardwick): Frederick Gibberd and Town Design in Practice: Hackney and Harlow Ms Ruth Lang (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University): The London County Council: A Plan for the Model Community 10.45 Coffee 11.15 Session 4: Culture and Democracy Theme: The proper use of leisure was a key theme in post-war Britain, with both Labour and Conservative administrations turning their attention to the subject. Chair: Dr Robert Proctor (University of Bath) Dr Alistair Fair (University of Edinburgh): Culture, Leisure and the Modern Citizen Ms Rosamund West (Kingston University): Replanning Communities through Architecture and Art: the post-war London County Council. Dr Lesley Whitworth (University of Brighton Design Archives): The Council of Industrial Design: Good Design for a Better World 12.45 Concluding Discussion & Goodbyes 4 Abstracts Session 1: The Pivotal Decades Spaces of Citizenship in inter-war England Elizabeth Darling This paper explores how architectural production functioned as a vehicle through which to explore ideas such as modernity, identity and community in a period which saw the expansion of suffrage to all men and some women (1919) and then to all men and women over 21 (1928). Taking a range of sites in its purview, its concern is to consider how particular notions of an English citizenry as (inter alia), cultured, healthy, productive, engaged, was constructed spatially and materially. That these sites were intended as exemplary both to their intended users and to a larger constituency - that is, socio-architectural models to be adopted at a wider national scale – is also to be discussed. The paper will focus on sites commissioned by private enterprise, local authorities and philanthropic/voluntary activists, including BBC Broadcasting House (1932) Kensal House (1936), the Finsbury Health Centre (1938) and Finsbury Plan (of which it formed part) and, in particular, the Pioneer Health Centre (1935). The purpose-built Centre was opened in 1935, and designed by Owen Williams to house the so-called Peckham Experiment initiated by Drs Innes Pearse & George Scott Williamson in 1926, a project predicated on the idea that if people were placed in particular types of environment those with innate potential would respond and interact and begin to improve themselves. The spaces of the Centre, and what the doctors called ‘instruments of health’ which included the building, some basic medical care (primarily birth control), but more so particular types of amenity within it – a swimming pool, gymnasium, movable furniture - would combine to create a setting for people to be enabled to realize their own modernity. The doctors wrote, ‘it is essentially a building designed to be furnished with people and with their actions.’ The Pioneer Health Centre was one of the most popular buildings among architecture students in the later 1930s (and, indeed, after the war), and the paper concludes by considering the longer story of the sites considered