Recent years have seen British architecture of the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s attract growing interest. The buildings of this period are becoming old enough to be the subjects of proposals for substantial remodeling or demolition, and so some of the key debates in contemporary British architectural conservation are concerned with them. At the same time, historians are increasingly keen to look beyond the trente glorieuses of the postwar British welfare state (i.e., 1945–75), which coincided with the high-water mark of modern architecture and planning. How were the architectural and urban principles of the previous three decades challenged and refined during the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s? Two complementary exhibitions mounted in 2018 explored this question, one showcasing the postmodern revival of historic forms and urban principles, and the other examining so-called high-tech architecture, which celebrated structural engineering and the use of mechanical services, fusing modernist enthusiasm...
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September 2019
Book Review|
September 01 2019
Review: The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture and Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960–1990
The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture
Sir John Soane's Museum
, London
16
May
–27
August
2018
Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960–1990
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
, University of East Anglia, Norwich
24
March
–2
September
2018
Alistair Fair
Alistair Fair
University of Edinburgh
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Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2019) 78 (3): 371–373.
Citation
Alistair Fair; Review: The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture and Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960–1990. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2019; 78 (3): 371–373. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2019.78.3.371
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