Post-War Homes: mid-century British architecture

Post-War Homes: mid-century British architecture, Dominic Bradbury, RIBA Publishing, 2026, 218 pages, 205 colour and black- and-white illustrations, hardback.

The scale of bomb damage across Britain in the second world war was immense, and together with the need for slum clearance, the loss of dwellings posed a huge challenge for post-war planners and architects. A target of 300,000 houses a year was set by the government in 1945, which was increased in the 1960s. Various methods were used to achieve these figures, from infill homes and small clusters to new satellite communities and ‘new towns’. The result marked a high point in house design, with mid-century British architects applying new ideas and innovation, as demonstrated by Dominic Bradbury in this well-structured book.

To cover the full range of building types, the author divides the book into five chapters. The first features stand-alone houses, which allowed architects to explore different ways of living, introducing varied plan forms, new materials and construction. Peter Womersley’s Farnley Hey and Basil Spence’s own house in Hampshire both have a Nordic flavour, while Peter Aldington’s Turn End is an early example of vernacular modernism. The full-height glass walls of Alison and Peter Smithson’s Upper Lawn Cottage draw the surrounding landscape into the dwelling. Chapter 2, dealing with estates, includes sensitively planned and landscaped Span developments designed by Eric Lyons, as well as large-scale social housing projects at Alton East and West, and Alexandra Road, London. There are also lesser-known schemes such as the Calthorpe Estate, Birmingham, by John Madin, and The Ryde, Hatfield, by Phippen, Randall and Parkes.

Chapters 3 and 4 tackle high-rise and mid-rise, the former being the most controversial building type up to the present day. For example, Park Hill, Sheffield, by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, and Trellick Tower by Ernö Goldfinger, both influenced by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, have suffered chequered histories, but are now considered to be a great success. Berthold Lubetkin’s Spa Green Estate, Finsbury, and Frederick Gibberd’s The Lawn, also in Finsbury, both erected at the same time as the Festival of Britain, display a liveliness reflecting the spirit of the time. Stirling and Gowan’s Langham House, Ham Common, went further in moving away from the rectangular forms that were common in housing design. The last of mid-rise projects selected by Bradbury is Robin Hood Gardens, the most contentious of all 20th-century housing schemes. Designed by the Smithsons, on a difficult site alongside arterial roads and the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel, it adopted the streets-in-the-sky concept used at Park Hill. But the public space was much less generous, and the raw surfaces of the concrete structure led to poor management and neglect, and ultimately demolition.

The final chapter deals with mixed-use schemes, which are perhaps the greatest achievement presented in the book. These involved not only the relationship between housing and landscape, but from the early 1950s onward, other amenities, such as schools, shops, pubs and libraries. In the best schemes, these amenities were woven into the urban fabric. However, only one of the exemplars featured – Wyndham Court, Southampton – is outside London (the others include the Barbican, the Brunswick Centre and Lillington Gardens). This highlights the planning failures in redeveloping Britain’s other great cities.

The book is beautifully illustrated with photographs, mostly from RIBA Collections. Almost all the 30 case studies are listed buildings, several at Grade II*, and are generally well-cared for. Only one no longer exists – Robin Hood Gardens – of which a small section was acquired by V&A East as an important exemplar of post-war architecture. In his conclusion, Bradbury reminds us that ‘as we struggle to match the housebuilding targets set back in the 1950s and 1960s, this legacy should be kept in mind, along with the sense of optimism in which such ambitious projects were designed and delivered.’

This article originally appeared as ‘A sense of optimism’ in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 187, published in December 2025. It was written by Peter de Figueiredo, reviews editor of Context.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation