Architectural History

The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain

This podcast deals with histories of architecture and the built environment. In this series, called Architecture and… we speak to a number of academics, architects, writers and thinkers to discuss space, buildings and cities, to think through contemporary debates and issues.

  1. 13 hr ago

    The Public Architect 1: Past and Present

    This is the first episode of our new miniseries, The Public Architect, an RIBA-funded project exploring the past and present relationship between the architectural profession and the public sector. In this episode, we speak to the historian John Gold about post-war architecture in Britain, its relationship to the state and local government, and some of the common misconceptions surrounding this period. We are then joined by Mike Althorpe, Andrea Jung, David Knight and Holly Lewis, a group of practitioners and researchers working across architecture and local government, to explore the contemporary relationship between architecture and the public sector. Contributors John Gold is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes University, and former Special Appointed Professor at Meiji University in Tokyo. A historical geographer with a focus on cities, he has published more than 200 works on architectural modernism, Olympic cities and urban history, and is currently completing The Legacy of Modernism, the final volume in his trilogy on the Modern Movement. Mike Althorpe is an urban historian, researcher and storyteller. He co-authored Revolutionary Low Rise (2019) and Dual Cities – Social Housing in London + New York (2025). Formerly Public Programmes Lead at the RIBA, he curated exhibitions including A Place to Call Home and Social Housing, and now works independently as The London Ambler. Andrea Jung is an architect with experience across both private practice and local government. After leading commercial projects at KPF and co-founding TURN Architects, she joined the public sector through the Public Practice Associate Programme. She is now Technical Design Manager in Islington Council's New Homes team. David Knight is a designer, strategist, author and director of DK-CM. He has led urban strategies for projects across the UK, holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, teaches at the London School of Architecture, and edited Public House: A Cultural and Social History of the London Pub, an Financial Times Book of the Year. Holly Lewis co-founded We Made That in 2006 and has led a wide range of urban regeneration and placemaking projects. She champions community involvement in design, equitable city-making and women in the built environment. Holly is a Mayor's Design Advocate for the Greater London Authority, a Design Council Expert, and Town Architect for Hackney Central. Architectural History is the podcast of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. The Public Architect was made possible thanks to funding from the Royal Institute of British Architects. It was hosted and produced by Claire Jamieson and Jess Kelly, with editing by Front Ear Podcasts and production support from Matthew Lloyd Roberts. If you enjoyed this series, please consider becoming a member of the SAHGB to support our work and access exclusive content: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/join-renew⁠

    1hr 15min

  2. 03/09/2024

    Architecture and the Internet

    In the final episode of our miniseries on Architecture & Media we discussed architectural criticism in the age of the internet, the shifting landscape of architectural discourse, and the new ways of thinking about the built environment that it has brought. Support the SAHGB by becoming a member: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/support-us⁠. Kate Wagner is the architecture critic at The Nation and the creator of McMansion Hell. She is currently writing a book about how an ugly world makes ugly buildings.  Teshome Douglas-Campbell is a London-based visual artist, architectural designer, journalist and alumni of the New Architectural Writers programme. Often working collaboratively with communities his practice explores diasporic experiences and deep time as crucial drivers for making and holding space in the urban environment.

    48 min

  3. 12/07/2024

    Architecture and Television

    In this episode we talk about architecture on television in Britain in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Support the SAHGB by becoming a member: https://www.sahgb.org.uk/support-us. Contributors: Gillian Darley is an architectural historian, author and broadcaster, whose books include Excellent Essex and biographies of Sir John Soane, John Evelyn and Octavia Hill. Gillian has written extensively about Ian Nairn, including the 2013 book Ian Nairn: Words in Place with David McKie. Tom Dyckhoff is a historian, writer, teacher and broadcaster about architecture, geographies, design and cities. Tom has written and presented lots of series and documentaries for television. He teaches the history and theory of cities & architecture at University College London and Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London. Tom’s phd research explores how television constructs a “public sphere” in which ideas about architecture, space and the city are constructed, contested and “made public”. Clips: Ian Nairn, Football Towns: Bolton and Preston, BBC, 1975 (1.38 on Preston Bus Garage) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k67CS9fQra4 Ian Nairn, Football Towns: Bolton and Preston, BBC, 1975 (8.44 on St Saviours, Bolton) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hLb4bjd6_4 Ian Nairn No Two the Same (Pacemakers), (featuring Churchill Gardens and Lillington Gardens), BBC, 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZxhOSDvj4E Ian Nairn, Nairn Across Britain: from London to Lancashire, BBC, 1972 (featuring Northampton market hall) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ8eyMqJkwY Ian Nairn, The More We Are Together: Eric Lyons the architect of suburbia, BBC, 1969 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01rwl9f/omnibus-the-more-we-are-together Ian Nairn, Football Towns: Huddersfield and Halifax, BBC, 1975 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQfgA_6HLT0 Stuart Hall on The Late Show, BBC, 1989 https://youtu.be/J2EFuf3yhaE?si=RTmKKXEfdld8n9h6 John Berger, Ways of Seeing: episode one, BBC, 1972 https://youtu.be/0pDE4VX_9Kk?si=clZObw7skqoFTq8- Patrick Keiller, London, BBC, 1994 https://youtu.be/nkfhFRiRmIw?si=Dfa7rBg8mhTec6k4

    42 min

  4. 12/06/2024

    Architecture and Radio

    In this episode we talk about architectural and aurality, asking what impact radio had on architecture, architects and public audiences. Support the SAHGB by becoming a member: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/support-us⁠. Our Contributors: Olga Touloumi is Associate Professor of Architectural History at Bard College. Her research concerns questions of globalization and media in twentieth architecture. Her first book Assembly by Design situates mid-20th century architectural constructions of global governance within debates on media democracies and liberal internationalism. Touloumi has co-edited Sound Modernities, a volume on how acoustics and sound technologies transformed modern architectural culture during the twentieth century; and with Theodora Vardouli Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground, a volume about the exchanges between designers and computational technologists in Europe and North America. Shundana Yusaf is Associate Professor of History and Theory at the School of Architecture, University of Utah. Her scholarship juxtaposes colonial/ postcolonial history with sound studies in architecture. Her first book is Broadcasting Buildings: Architecture on the Wireless, 1927-1945 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014). Her current book is called Resonant Tombs: A Feminist History of Sufi Shrines in Pakistan. As its starting point, it takes sound as an architectural material of construction and women as secondary architects, collectively nestling ephemeral auditory monuments with their bodily resources within material monuments built by heroic men with material resources.  Details of audio clips: Movietone News newsreel of First United Nations General Assembly at Westminster Hall 1946 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3em8Yvf13y4 British Pathe newsreel U.N. Hears President - Kennedy Asks Joint US - Soviet Moon Trip, 1963 https://youtu.be/iBcfSqwvVlg?si=iS7nJ0aIRIjbMFzp Charlie Chaplin - Adenoid Hynkel Speech - The Great Dictator (1940) https://youtu.be/isLNLpxpndA?si=iWZNmbzMehKQwT9y The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain brings together all those with an interest in the history of the built environment – academics, architects, heritage experts and the wider public. As the leading body in the field, we believe that appreciation of architectural history plays a vital role in understanding our culture, past and present. With the help of our members, we publish new research, organise a broad range of events, provide educational opportunities and advance the understanding of the built histories of all periods and places, in Britain and beyond. Membership https://www.sahgb.org.uk/

    42 min

  5. 09/02/2024

    Architecture and Media: Press, Periodicals and Magazines

    In this episode we discuss the press, periodicals and magazines in architectural history from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Support the SAHGB by becoming a member: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/support-us⁠. Our contributors are:  Dr Anne Hultzsch is an architectural historian and leads the ERC-funded group ‘Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900’ (WoWA) at ETH Zurich. With a PhD from the Bartlett, University College London, and a postdoc at AHO Oslo, she works on intersectionality in architectural history between ca. 1650 and 1930, exploring the histories of gender, print, perception, and travel. She is author of Architecture, Travellers and Writers: Constructing Histories of Perception 1640-1950 (2014) and has edited The Printed and the Built: Architecture, Print Culture, and Public Debate in the Nineteenth Century (with Mari Hvattum, 2018) and The Origins of the Architectural Magazine in Nineteenth-Century Europe (The Journal of Architecture, 2020).  Dr Lieske Huits, is a decorative arts historian and university lecturer at University of Leiden. Lieske’s PhD, titled A New Visual Narrative of Nineteenth-Century Historicism, explored historicism and revival styles in the decorative arts and architecture of the nineteenth century, and the display of historicist objects in international expositions and museums of decorative arts.  For more information about the SAHGB, their programme of events, publications and grants and to join the society, see their website at https://www.sahgb.org.uk/

    51 min

  6. 09/02/2024

    Architecture and Media - An Introduction

    In this episode we introduce the theme of our miniseries, architecture and media. We talk about our own research interests and what the study of media, in all its various forms, has to offer architectural history.  Jessica Kelly’s book about modern architecture and the media is called No More Giants: J.M. Richards, The Architectural Review and modernism and is published by Manchester University Press (2022), find out more about Jessica’s research here: https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/profiles/staff/jessica-kelly/ Matthew Lloyd Roberts is a PhD student working on the cultural reception of architecture in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain, details here: ⁠https://csca.aha.cam.ac.uk/roberts-phd/⁠ Matthew writes about architecture for a variety of publications and produces the podcast About Buildings and Cities. For more information about the SAHGB, their programme of events, publications and grants and to join the society, see their website at https://www.sahgb.org.uk/

    26 min

  7. 31/08/2023

    Constructing Coloniality: Statues and Empire

    This miniseries of the Architectural History podcast has been produced to mark the SAHGB Conference 2023: 'Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment'. The conference takes as its theme the coloniality of architecture and heritage in relation to the British Empire, from the early years of expansionism and the escalation of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the physical and political force wielded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the development of racial capitalism, to the subsequent and ongoing struggles for independence, freedom and justice.In this episode we spoke to Sonali Dhanpal about her research into a statue of Queen Victoria erected in Bangalore at the turn of the 20th century. The complex history of the statue speaks to the contested and anxious realities of imperial reification, all too often forgotten in contemporary debates about public statues and imperial legacies.To support the work of the SAHGB, become a member: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/join-renew⁠This podcast is produced by Front Ear Podcasts

    21 min

  8. 15/08/2023

    Constructing Coloniality: Carceral Architecture in India

    This miniseries of the Architectural History podcast has been produced to mark the SAHGB Conference 2023: 'Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment'. The conference takes as its theme the coloniality of architecture and heritage in relation to the British Empire, from the early years of expansionism and the escalation of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the physical and political force wielded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the development of racial capitalism, to the subsequent and ongoing struggles for independence, freedom and justice. In this episode we spoke to Mira Waits about her research on police stations in colonial India. Mira considers these buildings in the context of broader visual and material culture of policing and carcareal architecture in colonial histories.  To support the work of the SAHGB, become a member: ⁠https://www.sahgb.org.uk/join-renew⁠ This podcast is produced by Front Ear Podcasts

    14 min
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About

This podcast deals with histories of architecture and the built environment. In this series, called Architecture and… we speak to a number of academics, architects, writers and thinkers to discuss space, buildings and cities, to think through contemporary debates and issues.

Information

  • Creator
    The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain
  • Show Website
    Architectural History

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