Building the post-war world. . - What Went Wrong With Utopia - book review

Architectural Review, The, May, 2003 by Colin Boyne

By Nicholas Bullock. London: Routledge. 2002. [pounds sterling]24.99

This is a full and fascinating account of how Britain endeavoured to rebuild itself after the last war. A first reaction is to demand further research on the subject, because we need to know much more, now the scale of human conflict is so much greater than it was. The human race likes going to war, despite minority protestations; wars are enormously destructive, but they give a spring to the step, the various gods offer heavenly consolation, and vast efforts are put into innovation and invention.

Nearly two generations have been born since the last war, so the author starts with a description of air raids and the efforts by Ministries, professional bodies and organizations such as the Town and Country Planning Association, to begin to face up to the need for some national planning and how to rebuild thousands of blitzed houses on top of the thousands of slums due for clearance plus thousands more to meet a pre-war shortage.

Bullock divides his book in half, the last section describes new ways of building houses, schools and, briefly, offices and factories, followed by the slow revival of commercial work. The first half, titled 'Rethinking the new architecture', brilliantly describes the Topsy-like state of the administration of the country at the start of the war. There was seemingly no-one responsible for planning, apart from Forshaw and Abercrombie preparing the County of London Plan, and housing was in the hands of the Ministry of Health. At this point it would be good to be able to learn the names of those at the Ministry of Information who insisted that to raise morale it was important to announce promises of a better post-war Britain--and also to pinpoint the fools who decided that a prefabricated house was, ipso facto, a temporary one, a decision that seriously confused the housing programme.

Bullock relies heavily for his facts and theories on reports in the numerous architectural magazines of the time, which must arouse a little unease, but his most illuminating section is titled Old Masters and Young Turks. This small North London group, loosely linked to the Architectural Review's assistant editor Reyner Banham, but hating all the AR stood for, aimed to put themselves 'literally in the nest of the previous generation' and they eventually killed off CIAM. From this point onwards post-war architecture as a social art started to be replaced by a return to the traditional form of architecture as conspicuous display, delighting architect, client and, of course, the media.