Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): JARED MACKEN
This paper uncovers an alternative postwar architectural project on the city—British town centres of the 1960’s, and an accompanying overlooked architectural discourse. A new examination of this lost typology works to recuperate the town centre, including its specific history and projects, into a broader architectural discourse related to the city. In the late 1940’s, English towns and cities were dotted with urban voids created by an assortment of causes: from planned urban razing, post-war economic hardship, and most notably a result of World War II bombing raids. These voids had once been a rich fabric of diverse urban programs including an assortment of storefront shopping, offices spaces, schools, restaurants, cafes, and housing. Town centre projects in the 1960’s provided a new architectural typology that was packed with these programs, perfect for refilling these devastated voids. They were built within a perfect storm of conditions: a shift in land-use policy away from early postwar rebuilding efforts focused on schools and housing and towards commercial development; the availability of newly acquired disposable incomes in a domestic postwar economy; and an economic boom that involved relationships between developers and architects, both eager to invest in speculative projects that experimented with new methods for rebuilding these city centres. Town centres were characterized by their scale—larger than a single building but smaller than a city—making them distinctly different than masterplans, megastructures, and urban plans. In terms of form and program, town centres could be described as miniature cities, comprised of a mixture of uses housed in aggregated yet unified forms. Given their programmatic characteristics and their scale, town centres were distinctly contextual and were always inserted into these existing city voids. The goal of these projects was to supplement, never supplant, existing economic, cultural, and morphological urban systems, while many times fitting nicely within single urban blocks. This paper will feature case studies by the most prolific town centre builder of England from the 1960’s, Owen Luder, will explore how he subverted mainstream discourse on the city from this time period, and in turn, provide new design methodologies for the 21st century city. It will also relate him to a legacy of town centre projects in England, and insert this typology within 20th century architectural discourse on the city.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.109.92
Volume Editors
ISBN
978-1-944214-37-1
