March 30, 2023

Neal Shasore & Jessica Kelly: Postwar architecture and democracy.

1 hour 8 minutes

In Episode 25/2 of A is for Architecture I spoke with Head of School and Chief Executive of the London School of Architecture, Neal Shasore and Jessica Kelly, Reader in Architectural & Design History at University of the Creative Arts (UCA) and (also) teacher at London Metropolitan University, about their edited anthology, Reconstruction: Architecture, Society and the Aftermath of the First World War, published by Bloomsbury in February this year.

Our conversation addresses some of the overarching themes in the book, which features ‘[s]ixteen essays written by leading and emerging scholars [about] a period of reconstruction, fraught with the challenges of modernity and democratisation’, revealing ‘how the architectural developments of this period not only provided important foundations for what happened after 1945’, but also saw the emergence of new typologies, styles and practices responsive to a damaged but renewed - and global - society.

Critical but ever sophisticated, this is a much needed shot of Edwardian elegance in the rippling Po-PoMo arm of this series.

You can find Reconstruction of Bloomsbury’s website here, ready for your coin or plastic. Neal’s LSA profile is here, and his LinkedIn and Twitter are here and here and his Insta is here. There’s a video of Neal giving a lecture for the Architecture Foundation on his previous book, Designs on Democracy: Architecture & The Public In Interwar London on the YouTube here. Jessica’ UCA profile is here, here LinkedIn is here and her Twitter is here.