Book Description

The first 30 years of the twentieth century was the crucible in which modern society and culture were formed. In much of Europe social democracy emerged as a dominant force in politics; the housing of the working class was recognised as a legitimate responsibility of the state; and architecture - hitherto largely the preserve of the leisured class - was transformed into the vehicle for delivering the transformation of society. Beginning in Britain before the First World War, the pattern was to be repeated, to a greater or lesser extent, in the years that followed across much of Europe and, indeed, the world.

This is the first book to explore this new architecture of housing as an international phenomenon. The central figure was Raymond Unwin, the principal designer of the pioneering schemes of Letchworth Garden City and Hampstead Garden Suburb, who after the First World War became chief architect at the Ministry of Health and chairman of the Building Research Station. Unwin’s garden suburb model was adopted by the British government for its experiments in social housing during and after the First World War. It was also highly influential on the mainland of Europe, where it formed the reference point for modernist architects such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Ernst May. Theories of modern production developed by Henry Ford and FW Taylor meshed with transcendentalist ideas about new ways of living to bring about a revolution in the theory and practice of housing worldwide.

The accompanying CD makes widely accessible for the first time key documents from this period. These include not only writings on housing and town planning by Raymond Unwin and others but also official publications including the Tudor Walters Report, the reports of the Womens’ Housing Sub-Committee and reports from the Building Research Station.

About the author
Mark Swenarton is an architectural historian and critic. From 1977 to 1987 he taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture (University College London) where, with Adrian Forty, he set up the first masters course in architectural history in the UK. In 1985 he established the international journal Construction History. In 1989, with Ian Latham, he founded the monthly review Architecture Today, followed in 2000 by EcoTech, remaining as publishing editor of both titles until 2005. His books include Homes fit for Heroes, Artisans and Architects, Dixon Jones (with Ian Latham), The Politics of Making (with Igea Troiani and Helena Webster) and Feilden Clegg Bradley: the Environmental Handbook (with Ian Latham). Mark Swenarton is currently professor and head of architecture at Oxford Brookes University.

Reviews
This fascinating study of the growth of social housing is a racy tale of politics, war and fierce debate. ... The essays in the book are well-written pieces of original research, as you might expect from Swenarton... ’Building the New Jerusalem’ gives great insight into the realpolitik of solving both social and construction problems. And the vision of the title, sometimes buried amid reports and letters, shines through when you start looking at the plans in the book and on CD.
Eleanor Young, RIBA Journal, January 2009

This superbly-researched book challenges the conventional history of modern architecture by putting Britain’s garden-city and social housing movements at its origins. Swenarton not only establishes a more inclusive genealogy of modernism; he illuminates a living tradition of human-scaled, socially-conscious architecture that is all-the-more vital today.
Robert Fishman, University of Michigan

Building the New Jerusalem explores a fascinating and formative period in our thinking about modern housing, and especially its design and technology. It subverts, supplements, and surprises at every turn. Anyone interested in the history of British or European housing will want a copy.
Richard Harris, McMaster University

In this provocative collection of essays, Mark Swenarton narrates a story around the international influence of British architects and urbanists. A historian in command of facts and sources, he reminds readers that modern architecture in Britain was a social and political concern, not merely an aesthetic style. What emerges is a revised position for British architects within the writing of the modern movement during an era of social-democratic transformations.
M Christine Boyer, Princeton University

This thought-provoking collection of essays and documents in the crucial early phase of the politics, design, production and policy of twentieth-century public housing in Britain will be indispensable for all researchers in the area, whether from a perspective of history, architecture or social policy.
Alison Ravetz, Leeds Metropolitan University

Mark Swenarton shows how our small island provided the housing vanguard for the most exciting and challenging visions of building many Utopias in the twentieth century. We still struggle with the deep imprints these estates made on the shape of cities across Europe.
Anne Power, London School of Economics

Pages: 248

Format: 234 x 156 mm, hardback / jacket. 248pp plus CD Rom

Illustrations: 54 line drawings, 41 photos

Contents
Introduction
Home front
Neo-Georgian maison-type
An insurance against revolution
Rationality and rationalism
Sellier and Unwin
CIAM, Teige and the Existenzminimum
The education of an urbanist
Unwin and Sitte
Rammed earth revival
Breeze blocks and Bolshevism
Houses of paper and brown cardboard
Endnotes and references
Index