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British Design brings together leading international scholars, designers and journalists to provide new perspectives on British design in the last sixty years, and how it at once looked back to the past with the continuation of traditions that spoke to Britain's design heritage, and looked forwards with the embrace of modernist and postmodernist style. The book responds to and develops new ways of understanding the recent history of design in Britain, with case studies on designed spaces and objects, including domestic interiors, retail spaces, schools and university buildings and transport.
The contributors address significant moments and phenomena in the historical and social history of British design, from the rise and fall of the English Country House style and the Brutalist architectural boom of the 1960s to the modern shopping space, and consider the work of key contemporary designers ranging from Tommy Roberts to Thomas Heatherwick. British Design provides new criticism and analysis on how design, from the immediate post-war period to the present day, has developed and changed how we live and how we interact with the spaces in which we live.
British Design is split into 13 chapters and is richly illustrated with 65 images, 16 of which are in full colour.
List of contents
Foreword
British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age: A Retrospective View, Christopher Breward, Edinburgh College of Art, UK and Ghislaine Wood, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK
The Spaces and Places of British Modernity, Fiona Fisher and Penny Sparke, Kingston University, UK
1. The Primavera Story, 1946-1967, Janine Barker, Northumbria University, UK and Cheryl Buckley, University of Brighton, UK
2. Tommy Roberts: Kleptomania to Two Columbia Road, Paul Gorman, Visual Culture Writer, UK
3. John Fowler, Nancy Lancaster and the English Country House, Martin Wood, Designer and Writer, UK
4. At Home with Modern Design, 1958-1965: A Case Study, Christine Lalumia, Design Historian, UK
5. Conservative Flagship. Interior design for RMS Windsor Castle, 1960, Harriet McKay, Royal College of Art and Suffolk New College, UK
6. Bernat Klein: Colouring the Interior, Fiona Anderson, National Museums Scotland, UK
7. Ancient Spaces in Modern Dress: Basil Spence at the University of Sussex, Maurice Howard, University of Sussex, UK
8. Architects Co-partnership: Private Practice for Public Service, Alan Powers, Writer and Curator, UK
9. Something Fierce: Brutalist Historicism in the University of Essex Library, Jules Lubbock, University of Essex, UK
10. Hidden Internationalisms: Tradition and Modernism in Post-war Primary School Design 1948-1972, Catherine Burke, University of Cambridge, UK
11. Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances. Modernist Pop and Modernist Architecture: A Short History of a Misunderstanding, Owen Hatherley, Journalist, UK
12.
Edinburgh on the Couch,
Richard J. Williams, University of Edinburgh, UK
13. Heatherwick Studio: A New Bus for London, Abraham Thomas, Sir John Soane's Museum, UK
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Chris Breward is the Director of National Museums Scotland. He was trained at the Courtauld Institute and the Royal College of Art, London and has previously worked as Director of Collection and Research at the National Galleries of Scotland, Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and as Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. His published interests include the relationship between art and fashion, visual and cultural histories of masculinity, and histories of city life. He is the author of Fashioning London (Bloomsbury, 2004) and co-editor of Material Memories (Bloomsbury, 1999), The Englishness of English Dress (Bloomsbury, 2002), Fashion and Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2005), Fashion's World Cities (Bloomsbury, 2006), and Styling Shanghai (Bloomsbury, 2020).Fiona Fisher is a researcher in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Kingston University, UK, where she is a member of the Modern Interiors Research Centre.Ghislaine Wood is a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK.
Summary
British Design brings together leading international scholars, designers and journalists to provide new perspectives on British design in the last sixty years, and how it at once looked back to the past with the continuation of traditions that spoke to Britain's design heritage, and looked forwards with the embrace of modernist and postmodernist style. The book responds to and develops new ways of understanding the recent history of design in Britain, with case studies on designed spaces and objects, including domestic interiors, retail spaces, schools and university buildings and transport.
The contributors address significant moments and phenomena in the historical and social history of British design, from the rise and fall of the English Country House style and the Brutalist architectural boom of the 1960s to the modern shopping space, and consider the work of key contemporary designers ranging from Tommy Roberts to Thomas Heatherwick. British Design provides new criticism and analysis on how design, from the immediate post-war period to the present day, has developed and changed how we live and how we interact with the spaces in which we live.
British Design is split into 13 chapters and is richly illustrated with 65 images, 16 of which are in full colour.
Foreword
British Design provides an illuminating encounter with the history and key features of post-War design in Britain.
Additional text
Anyone who's wondered how the Britain of utility furniture and wartime rationing managed to evolve into ‘Cool Britannia’ will find this a remarkable book. The authors work from case studies, achieving a remarkably nuanced portrait of a country in transition. From the trend setting crafts for sale at the London boutique Primavera to the "fun furniture" available at Mr Freedom, the examples presented in this edited volume are like a breath of fresh air; they also provide a counterweight to older, decorous studies of British "good taste." The interiors of post-war country house decorators like John Fowler and modernist architects like Mary Crowley and David Medd receive equal treatment. British interior design emerges as transgressive and eccentric, romantic and--at its best--ingenious.
Report
This compact volume represents good value for money with many fresh ideas and perceptive overviews. As a handbook of ideas about the history of British design from the post-war years to the 2010s, it is useful and thought provoking and gathers together leading experts, emerging and established researchers and polemicists. Journal of Design History
