C20 Journal 10 - The Seventies

Edited by Elain Harwood & Alan Powers

As interest in post-war British architecture and society grows, the 1970s is increasingly seen as a crucial time of transition when, despite adverse economic conditions, new thinking emerged to modify the Modernist beliefs of the 1960s, incorporating greater concern for the realities of life. Wit, imagination, humility and sensitivity to people and environments helped to create more flexible approaches to the design of individual buildings and cities.

Described by Bridget Cherry as ‘essential reading for anyone who wants to understand that decade’, this journal includes eleven essays which demonstrate the variety and suprising zest of the decade.

Contents

Elain Harwood and Alan Powers From Downtown to Diversity: Revisiting the 1970s

Barnabas Calder Castles, Cows and Glasshouses: the Burrell Collection Architectural competition

Louis Hellman Something is Happening Here but You Don’t Know What It Is

Catherine Croft David Rock: ‘Architecture is the Land of Green Ginger’ or ‘Form Follows Culture’

Alistair Fair The End of  ’Optimism and Expansiveness’? Designing for Drama in the 1970s

Geraint Franklin ‘White Wall Guys’: The Return of Heroic Modernism

Roland Jeffery The Centrality of Milton Keynes

Hannah Parham Two Faiths: Modernism Meets Islam in London, 1969-1984

Simon Wartnaby An Exemplary 1970s Building: Gun Wharf, Chatham

Gavin Stamp Suburban Affinities

Ken Powell Terry Farrell, Jeremy Dixon and the Beginning of Post-Modernism in England