Building the Post-War World offers an overall account of modern architecture in the decade after World War II. The period saw the establishment of modern architecture in Europe and Britain's leading role at the heart of the debate on the new architecture. This book offers an understanding of the general international debate on modern architecture and the architectural challenges of post-war reconstruction. It should be of value to those teaching courses on architectural and urban history and all those with an interest in Modernism and the visual arts generally.

Building the Post-war World examines the way in which World War II and the ten years of reconstruction that followed saw the establishment of modern architecture in Britain. It charts the opportunities created by post-war rebuilding showing how the spirit of innovation and experimentation necessary to winning the war found applications in reconstruction. Above all it shows how hopes for a new and better world became linked to the fortunes of new architecture.

This book was originally published in 1985. During the 1920s and 1930s, a series of housing developments was built in Europe, based on unprecedented levels of public finance allied to innovative policies of planning, and architectural design. How did these developments, which were the foundation of later social housing programmes, come into being? This study sets out to answer the question by looking into the evolution of the movement for housing reform in Germany and France, from the middle of the nineteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War. This book also examines the...