Mary Drummond

Mark Swenarton will be familiar to many readers. For 30 years he has researched the shifts in housing policy in design that took place in the period either side of the First World War. His focus has been primarily, although not exclusively, on the UK. This book is a compilation of his writings, which comes complete with a CD containing scanned copies of 15 key documents and publications from the period 1901–27, plus a history of the UK’s Building Research Station written by Lea (1971). It is extensively illustrated with drawings and photos from the period. Swenarton’s work has always carried a distinctive stamp. He straddles history, social scientific analysis and architecture in a manner that is almost unique. It is no surprise then to find these strengths to the fore in this book. Few architects today display much intellectual enthusiasm for early British council housing; few analysts of housing policy engage with the functional aspects of different types of building materials; and historians are more engaged by states than by housing estates. Yet Swenerton is able to show that his focus is not just an idiosyncrasy. In the introductory chapter that welds together the various papers he has written over a long period, he sets out his basic proposition. It is that in the years between 1900 and 1930, politics, housing and architecture were all transformed, but also intimately intertwined. Thus housing was a central concern in the ascent of social democratic politics, while architects looked to the new state-funded building programmes for commissions, but also as the vehicle for a new kind of architecture which itself was the dynamo for a new social order. The subsequent chapters unpack and adorn these premises. The story begins with the run-up to the 1919 Housing Act. In 1915, Britain’s Ministry of Munitions planned a huge explosives factory at Gretna, a village on the Scottish border that was safe from German naval attack. Accommodation had to be provided. Raymond Unwin led the planning and design and proceeded to demonstrate how design could be simplified yet still aesthetic, through the grouping of plain frontages and use of open space. Wartime shortages of timber and brick led to experiments with new building materials and hence to the establishment in 1917 of what would become the Building Research Establishment (which is itself the focus of a later chapter). Thus the foundations were laid for the Tudor Walters Committee and its seminal report that underpinned the brief heyday of ‘Homes for Heroes’ before the fear of red revolution dissipated in the early 1920s. To Swenarton, it is Unwin who is the Hero for Homes. He recurs regularly throughout; his name features in the title of two of the 11 chapters; and he is the author of four of the