You are here:

The community architecture movement emerged in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century, across the 1960s to the 1990s. This seminar is drawn from Holly’s new post-doctoral research on this under-historicised movement. Responding to the perceived repression of democracy in modernist post-war urban design, community architecture called for more participatory approaches to architectural practice and town planning. Community architecture’s rallying cry gathered momentum in grassroots initiatives, student culture, architects’ offices, trade unions, the monarchy, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the ministerial organs of central government. Holly will trace the curious migration of the movement’s arguments, from their emergence in leftist counter-culture in the 1960s and 1970s to their redeployment by figures on the right by the 1980s. The history of community architecture suggests that the ‘New Left’ and ‘New Right’ – which have conventionally been characterised as profoundly polarised camps – drew upon a shared political language in post-war Britain.

Holly Smith is an historian of modern Britain and a Research Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge. She did her PhD at UCL. Her first book, on the history of high-rise housing in Britain, is being published by Verso.


All welcome- this session is free to attend, but booking in advance is required.