I for one can’t wait but I do have skin in the game - a piece on the post-war history of the idea of the working class community - but there’s so much more - it’s a BIG book

A short post about the Modern British City, out in November: www.lundhumphries.com/blogs/featur...

Pleased with this small Gustavsberg dish, showing Eskil Sundahl's Kooperativa Förbundet headquarters in Södermalm (1935).

Managed to re-buy this Ironbridge B Power Station commemorative plate.

Here is Spångavägen 49, the “Lamellahus” Oliver Cox, Michael Ventris & Graeme Shankland rented in 1947. They were later dubbed “Swedophiles”, and I’ve been exploring many of the places they visited, all of it so beautifully maintained it is easy to recapture there excitement & why 🇸🇪 so influential.

Paul Hedqvist‘s functionalist collective terrace at Ålstensgatan (1932-3). Per Albin Hansson, who was the prime minister of Sweden from 1923 to 1946 lived here, which seems just right.

Léonie & Charles-Eduoard Geisendorf’s S’s Görans gymnasium, Stockholm (1960). A masterpiece.

Kenneth Rowntree's 'Holiday in Sweden', 1938. Off to Stockholm tomorrow, mostly need to look at housing, but recommendations welcome. 🇸🇪

A piece by me in this terrific, wide-ranging, & open access celebration of @petermandler.bsky.social, about Mass Observation, the Architectural Association, and attempts to think about housing sociologically in late-1930s Britain: read.uolpress.co.uk/read/democra...

Richard Gilbert Scott’s swooping Vatican II Our Lady Help of Christians, Birmingham (1966-7)

You can get 25% off my book UP IN THE AIR: A HISTORY OF HIGH-RISE BRITAIN at Waterstones, with the code SUMMER25 until Thursday 31 #WPreorder

On Friday, Sept 26th, we'll be marking the retirement of @petermandler.bsky.social as Professor of Modern Cultural History at @camhistory.bsky.social with the launch of 'Democratising History: Modern British History Inside and Out', published by @uolpress.bsky.social. (Free) tickets available!

Very sad to hear about the death of Andrew Saint, pictured here giving huge architectural history energy with Gavin Stamp at the NT. His books all written with tremendous style across a terrific range of topics. Towards a Social Architecture, his superb history of post-war schools my favourite.

A recording of a lecture by me on "Basil Champneys & the Politics of Prettiness", slightly out of my depth, at a very enjoyable day @newnhamcollege.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=frHq...

The Modern British City 1945-2000 is out on November 28th, and is available for pre-order from ‪@lhartbooks.bsky.social‬: www.lundhumphries.com/products/the....

Wedgwood moon landing plate

This Twentieth Century Society book, out in September, is going to be absolutely stonking.

My book is out on 28 October with @versobooks.bsky.social 💥 It’s available for pre-order at £20: www.waterstones.com/book/up-in-t...

Pleased with my new bird feeder

Fred Millet sculpture at the LCC’s Raglan Estate (1965).

I'll be joined by architectural historian Otto @osaumarezsmith.bsky.social for the concluding discussion. This lecture is hosted by thebaltrust.org and is the last in their Spring series on the architecture of transport in Britain from Georgian times to the present day.

Illustrations from a 1965 issue of Northern Architect, imagining a linear monorail city stretching from Newcastle to Teesside. 💥

Groovy perspectives from a 1963 Ministry of Education building bulletin on a youth club in Bristol.

Photograph in Cassabella of the points of the LCC’s Canada Estate, Rotherhithe (by a group including Colin Lucas & Philip Bottomley), foregrounded by a still industrial docklands River Thames.

The Coplay Cement Company Kilns, located at Coplay, Pennsylvania in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The nine kilns were built between 1892 and 1893 and used for the production of Portland cement. #abandoned #urbex #bricks #industry #Coplay #photography #EastCoastKin

Corb your enthusiasm. My flat in World of Interiors: www.worldofinteriors.com/story/otto-s...

Advert for the plum job of head of casework at @c20society.bsky.social: c20society.org.uk/work-with-us....

F staircase, Powell & Moya’s Cripps Building, Cambridge (1967).

Cutting things fine, I've just submitted the manuscript for Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London to @manchesterup.bsky.social. Which seems a good moment to notice that the book has made its way into the virtual world. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181954/

Event showcasing brilliant emerging research in twentieth-century heritage: secure.c20society.org.uk/Default.aspx..., the first public event put on by @c20society.bsky.social's new youth group. Come along!

Reading Helen Ashton’s 1932 novel Bricks & Mortar, a gentle novel about an architect & his family from the 1890s to the present. It’s remarkably astute about buildings & the architectural profession; brilliantly the main protagonist’s daughter becomes an AA trained Modernist.

Magnificent, gigantic abstract mosaic murals, by Kenneth Barden & J E Tyrrell, towering all the way up the 16 stories of two Gosport tower blocks (1963).

A Welsh miner’s fan, I think made as an apprentice piece in the late 19th century, an object of extraordinary dexterity & I feel inadvertent futurism.

Publication day! A social & architectural history of post-war Scottish new towns: planning & buildings plus community, family, gender, work, education, home. The ebook is FREE via bit.ly/4hLkxn9. Print copy (more attractive!) via www.bloomsbury.com/uk/building-... - do ask libraries to purchase

A brilliant event last night with @c20society.bsky.social to launch our 70th anniversary edition of Outrage by Ian Nairn, with @osaumarezsmith.bsky.social, @gmdarksky.bsky.social and Travis Elborough (also featuring @gardnergareth.bsky.social). Always lovely to see a packed room!

Hillingdon asking for feedback on a proposal to locally list Telecom House in Hayes (1973, by PSA with Gray Associates). Channelling Kenzo Tange & CPB’s Leeds University, a thrilling & unusual example of sculptural brutalism. Write in support here: www.hillingdon.gov.uk/article/1401....

Does anyone have access to ancestry.co.uk? I'm looking for the LCC sociologist Margaret Beatrice Willis. She trained at Bedford College, 1944-7, so probably born in the early 1920s. I need to establish proof of death to access her student records, & am stumped in finding an obituary. Thank you.

Wedgwood Festival of Britain mug, designed by Norman Makinson, & depicting the Skylon and Crystal Palace.

Utterly charmed by Jim Venturi’s loving film Stardust about his parents Bob & Denise Scott Brown, screened this evening by the Architecture Foundation, as much a romantic comedy as about the buildings, but with biting things to say about women in architecture. Deserves wide distribution.

John Ridgewell painting, 'Town with River' (1967)

I highly recommend the Science Museum’s delightful, intelligent exhibition about Science at the Palace of Versailles, many wondrous objects, including this 1679 map of the moon.

New Penguin Classic edition of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation making excellent use of Ernő Goldfinger's design for the Women's Parliament Exhibition, in Boot's Piccadilly (1943).

“If it opens people’s eyes to the beauty and diversity of the architecture of the period, it will be marvellous” C20’s @osaumarezsmith.bsky.social in the @theguardian.com on the new film The Brutalist, that’s winning awards and helping the heritage fight. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

I've stepped in to chair this @c20society.bsky.social event, secure.c20society.org.uk/Default.aspx..., about the great Ian Nairn's Outrage, which is being republished; with Travis Elborough & @gmdarksky.bsky.social. Nairn sparked my interest in architecture, so will be great fun. Come!

A 16th century Umbrian bowl once owned by William Morris.

Picked up this sweet little London Transport guide, with advice on which buses to catch to see so of Hawksmoor’s churches in a day by bus; the route still holds good even if you can no longer buy a ‘red bus rover’.

The Bata Factory in East Tilbury (from 1932), a proper slice of Czech functionalism designed by Jan Kotěra, František Lydie Gahura and Vladimír Karfík, an interwar mittleuropa modern vision incongruously rising from the Essex marshes.

Ingrave Church, Essex (1734-6), architect unknown, perhaps by Lord Petre. Austere, muscular, & very peculiar, like a water tower or something by Giles Gilbert Scott, with little of the prettiness one would expect for the date. A cracking thumper.

Ove Arup’s Labworth Cafe (1932-3), Canvey Island, overlooking the Thames Estuary.

The Cloisters, Letchworth Garden City, W.H. Cowlishaw (1905-7), a decidedly peculiar theosophical college, the form of which reportedly came to the foundress Annie Lawrence in a dream. I can believe it. Unheimlich.