This lecture will be hybrid. Please book your ticket for attendance in person or online. You will receive access to the online event via email the day before the event.

Abstract

The community architecture movement burst onto the scene in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century. Developing out of a critique of modernism, this movement called for more participatory approaches to architectural practice and planning. The community architecture movement was made up of various nodes. It was underpinned by protean and politically volatile ideas. Many of its built products have been dismissed as formally unremarkable and aesthetically clumsy. For these reasons, community architecture has remained under-historicised – but these same reasons also hint at its complexity and interest. This talk will trace the curious migration of the movement’s libertarian arguments, from the sphere of radical progressive counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s to altogether more conservative circles by the 1980s, to consider what debates about buildings can tell us about modern British political culture.

About Holly Smith

Holly Smith is a historian of modern Britain, whose work spans political, social, urban, and architectural history. Her first book, Up in the Air: A History of High-Rise Britain, was published in 2025. She is a Research Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge, working on a new monograph on community architecture in twentieth-century Britain.