Research Catalog

Title

Tower block : modern public housing in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland / Miles Glendinning and Stefan Muthesius.

Author

Glendinning, Miles, 1956-

Publication

New Haven : Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1993.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Muthesius, Stefan.

Description

420 p. : ill., plans; 29 cm.

Summary

• Once they were seen as one of the greatest triumphs of the postwar Welfare State and of the social functionalism of Modern architecture. More recently, high flats and other dense Modern housing patterns have become the target of widespread, violent condemnation. The authors of Tower Block have decisively broken from this polarised rhetoric, believing that it has itself fuelled the 'high-rise problem'. Instead, they have undertaken a cautious but comprehensive historical analysis of the buildings in the hope that this may help foster a generally more balanced attitude towards them.
• In its comprehensive answer to these two fundamental questions - which take in, between them, the conception and the production of Modern housing - the book contributes significantly to the history of Modern architecture, as well as social policy and public administration. And the two massive gazetteers at the end, containing a statistical list of all public-authority high blocks in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, and a bibliography of architecturally noteworthy projects, provide a vast quarry of data for local and national historians.
• The second question takes a different form. Why was there such a rapid and massed building of multi-storey blocks - peaking in the mid-1960s - across all urban areas of Scotland, England and Wales? An immensely broad research programme, using both central and local sources, including countless interviews, has allowed the authors to conclude that the chief driving force was municipal pride - the idealistic daring of councillor 'housing crusaders' determined to give 'their people' new homes, as many and as fast as possible. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, the new housing drive was masterminded by powerful civil servants.
• Two fundamental questions are addressed in these pages. Firstly: why were tower blocks held to provide good dwellings - better than any previous form of dense urban housing? Here, the authors explore the beliefs of designers and theorists in technical matters such as density, layout, construction and services, as well as in the less easily defined, yet equally urgent, search for 'community' in new housing. And they show that, alongside all this, there ran a belief that it was possible, in at least some of these solutions, to achieve an absolute architectural quality.

Subject

• 1900-1999
• Architecture and society > Great Britain
• Architecture > Great Britain > History > 20th century
• Architecture > Great Britain > 20th century
• High-rise apartment buildings > Great Britain
• Public housing > Great Britain
• Architecture et société > Grande-Bretagne
• Architecture > Grande-Bretagne > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Architecture > Grande-Bretagne > 20e siècle
• Immeubles d'habitation en hauteur > Grande-Bretagne
• Logement social > Grande-Bretagne
• Architecture and society
• Architecture, Modern > 20th century > Great Britain
• Architecture
• Architecture > Aspect social > Grande-Bretagne
• High-rise apartment buildings
• Public housing
• Public housing > Great Britain > 20th century
• Flatgebouwen
• Great Britain

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Sect. I. Design -- Pt. A. Modern Dwelling: Plan, Fittings, Construction -- 1. Search for the New: The Postwar Definition of Modern Architecture -- 2. Inside the Dwelling: Size, Plan, Fittings, Heating -- 3. Need and Fit: Type of Household and Type of Dwelling -- 4. Case for Flats and Maisonettes -- 5. Mixed Development -- 6. Daylight and Densities: Zeilenbau and Open Space -- 7. Multi-Storey Architecture in the 1950s: Point Block versus Slab Block -- 8. Very High Blocks -- 9. Services Outside the Flat and Access -- 10. New Construction: Reinforced Concrete and Prefabrication -- 11. New Construction and Appearance. The Modern Public Authority Dwelling -- Pt. B. 'Community Life': A Postwar Architectural Stimulus -- 12. Welfare State Utopia -- 13. Town Planning: Communal Open Space and Housing Layout; The Neighbourhood Unit -- 14. Sociology of Community: From Social Reform to Scepticism and Nostalgia -- ^
• 26. Curate's Egg: Provincial Initiatives in England and Wales -- 27. Break-up of an Empire: Reorganisation in London -- Pt. C. Northern Ireland's Housing Revolution -- 28. Pursuit of 'Parity' -- 29. Great Leap Forward: Production in the 1960s -- Sect. III. Breakdown -- 30. Rejection of Modern Design -- 31. End of the Drive: The Collapse of 'Production' -- 32. 'New Slums': Management Problems and the Undermining of Production -- 33. Conclusion: 'Utopia' on Trial? Appendix: High Flats in the Channel Islands -- MAPS (showing administrative boundaries): Central Clydeside; Economic Planning Regions of England and Wales; West Midlands; South East Lancashire; West Yorkshire; Merseyside; Tyneside; Greater London -- Gazetteer 1: Multi-Storey Developments Erected by Public Housing Authorities in the UK and Channel Islands since 1945 -- Gazetteer 2: A Selection of References to Public Housing in the UK from 'National' Periodicals, Chiefly Architectural, c. 1945-1970.

ISBN

0300054440

LCCN

93026962

OCLC

• 28586217
• ocm28586217
• SCSB-9063760

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library