Watney's Brewery exhibition at the Design Centre, 28 Haymarket, London Standard.

Talk

Everyday modernism

Lost futures / futures found

Monday 20 February 2017 6.30 - 8pm

Geological Society, Piccadilly, W1.

£12, £6 concessions. Includes talk and drinks reception.

Sold out

Futures Found

Go to the exhibition

Our panel explores whether focusing on landmark postwar buildings obscured Modernism's transformation of everyday life.

Think of postwar Modernism and images of monumental buildings inevitably come to mind. However, there were also figures working to introduce architectural modernity on a more approachable scale: the artists who illustrated Ladybird books, for instance, and the designers who created the first chain pubs. By expanding our focus to incorporate these minor modernisms we can develop a more holistic understanding of the period and move beyond the canonisation of certain buildings as icons to picture a more vibrant, living modernity.

This does not mean abandoning a critical approach to production at the other end of the scale. Instead we should ask whether, in making Modernism available for domestic consumption, these pioneers were forced to compromise with the world that it was meant to change – or did they smuggle radical ideas into everyday life, transforming it more effectively than any bombastic building or high-minded polemic ever could?

Speakers:
John Grindrod – Writer and author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain
Ben Highmore – Writer, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, and author of Culture (Key Ideas in Media and Cultural Studies) and The Great Indoors: At Home in the Modern British House
Penny Sparke – Pro Vice-Chancellor and Director, Modern Interiors Research Centre, Kingston University
Joe Kerr (chair) – Architectural historian, Co-editor of London: From Punk to Blair and an occasional bus driver at Tottenham garage