Coming to Terms with Modern Times: English architecture in the post-war era - Simon Thurley  


The Second World War intensified and magnified debates that had been current amongst architects since 1914. It also marks a fault line in English architectural history. Architects, supported by politicians, decisively moved away from tradition and sought to create a new language of architecture. Some loved it, but unfortunately the public grew to hate it.

This is a part of the lecture series, English Architecture: Into the Modern World.
Simon Thurley's four lectures complete his survey of English building from the Saxons to the present day. The theme is modernity and tradition. This is the story of how British architects struggled to find an architectural language that met the needs and aspirations of a society in a state of rapid change while negotiating deep and popular traditions and beliefs. Two World Wars shook the nation producing the seemingly contradictory emotions of nostalgia and progress. Out of this has come the world in which we live.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently nearly 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.
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