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Hello sailor: Plymouth, 1966
 This excellent short film from 1966 shows what Plymouth has been up to, 25 years after the blitz which devastated the city.It's a breathless dash through buildings of houses, high flats, schools, a...
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Walter Gropius reveals all
Picture from https://rupalsourendre.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/bauhaus/Have you heard these fantastic audio interviews hosted by UbuWeb with Walter Gropius discussing different aspects of the Bauhaus and...
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St Peter's Seminary, Cardross (1966)
Here is a quite extraordinary film. As Hinterland, the show created in the modernist ruins of Cardross seminary is being performed, this is a film from 1966 of the Seminary in use. What's immediately...
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New Town, Home Town (1979)
Here's an excellent 1979 BBC documentary about the British postwar new towns. The presenter, Colin Ward, is famous both as a writer on urban issues, and as an anarchist, with a profound distrust of...
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Bill Grundy Looks at Aylesbury (1972)
These days Bill Grundy is perhaps best known as the man who the Sex Pistols swore at on the Thames Television Today programme on December 1 1976. 'You dirty fucker!' says Steve Jones at one point,...
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Vision and Reality by Stephen Willats
It will come as no surprise to anyone who's read Concretopia that I am a fan of first person interviews with people who have created or lived in postwar buildings. The fashion is much more towards the...
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Beautifying Bilston, 1975
Bilston in the Black Country is one of those areas scarred by the legacy of the Industrial Revolution. It's just the kind of place that planners and landscape architects would love to try to work on....
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Women in Construction, 1983
Here's a terrific glimpse into a piece of social history that is usually ignored – a film made by the much missed Inner London Education Authority in 1983 to encourage girls and young women to consider...
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I'm the Girl He Wants to Kill - Thriller (1974)
Imagine being trapped in an office block at night, alone apart from a man who wants to kill you. This is the chilling and brilliantly realised premise behind this extremely suspenseful TV film from...
View ArticleIan Nairn in Bristol
Back in 2014 I was part of a panel discussion about Ian Nairn at the Bristol Festival of Ideas. The other panel members were rather illustrious: Gillian Darley, whose excellent biography had just been...
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Thamesmead, 1969
Let's have a tour of Thamesmead in 1969, thanks to those excellent folk at British Pathe. This is unused footage, silent and beautifully shot, exploring the estate when it first opened. We even get to...
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William Mitchell at work, 1960
One of the most striking features of postwar architecture and planning in Britain was the use of public art as integral to the design and function of everything from office blocks to housing estates....
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Construction of Southern Television Centre, 1970
The arrival of colour TV signal in the late 1960s led all of the UK's broadcasters to adapt to the new medium. Some, like ATV in Birmingham, LWT in London and Southern in Southampton decided they...
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Events Summer/Autumn 2016
I've got a few more talks lined up for 2016...August:Manchester Modernist SocietyTen Buildings that Changed Postwar BritainThursday 4th August 2016, 6.30pm (Man Met Uni at70 Oxford Street)How did...
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Croydon: The High Rise and Fall
Have you ever been to the Fairfield Halls in Croydon? I absolutely love it. There's the building, of course, with its mild modernism and nod to the Festival Hall. But there's also the amount of...
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Challenge - A Northern Ireland Housing Trust film (1965)
This is a fascinating film. It tells the story of the Northern Ireland Housing Trust, made in 1965, before the era of the Troubles completely changed the direction of the country. The Trust ran between...
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Turn-Up for Tony (1968)
I'm a big fan of 1960s British Social Realist cinema, and here's a curious offshoot. Turn Up for Tony was made in 1968 by Tyne Tees Television, a dialogue-free comedy like Eric Sykes's The Plank,...
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Building BrasÃlia
Here's a clip taken from a longer 1960s US documentary film on Brazil – this section here concerns itself with the building of BrasÃlia, the modernist city. The city was planned by Lúcio Costa and...
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A Cathedral in Our Time, 1967
One of my favourite postwar buildings is Frederick Gibberd's Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, or Paddy's Wigwam.The circular crown design, its spectactular wrap around stained glass and the dramatic...
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Rebuilding Nottingham
Here's a couple of news reports that show the rebuilding of Nottingham city centre in the 1960s and 70s.The first is a fascinating interview with the architect of the Victoria Centre, Arthur Swift,...
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