“There is an accepted narrative to the way we think about our postwar architectural legacy. That narrative is somewhat akin to the plot of a superhero blockbuster: a team of supervillains – planners, architects, academics – have had their corrupt, megalomaniac way with the country for 30 years. Then, at long last, a band of unlikely heroes – a ragbag of poets, environmentalists and good, honest citizens – rose up against this architectural Goliath and toppled it in the name of Prince Charles. In this story, prewar modernism equals good, postwar modernism equals bad.
“Hence while early modernism is still much imitated [Channel 4’s Grand Designs with its glass-fronted white boxes], the default word for what we ended up with after the Second World War is “concrete monstrosities”.
“And yet, was that what actually happened? Were these architects and planners the philistine barbarians of popular myth? Are the places they planned and built as awful as some might make us believe? And is their legacy one of catastrophic failure?
“After all, they inherited a nation where millions lived in overcrowded conditions in cities, where factories belched toxic fumes onto the slums next door and the most basic sanitation was a dream for millions. It isn’t all that hard to understand the demand for change and the excitement of new ideas. A mere half century had brought the motorcar and aeroplanes, antibiotics and nuclear physics. The possibilities for human progress seemed endless, and after the catastrophic upheaval of two wards, people around the world were open to new ways of living.”
[Concretopia, by John Grindrod]
