Context 160 - July 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 0 : J U L Y 2 0 1 9 25 Second world war limiting the radical nature of most plans. Even where the general patterns were retained, seem- ingly modest alterations – such as the widen- ing and straightening of streets – implied the removal of many of the buildings that survived actual bombing, and changed the nature of the urban form. An especially dramatic and increas- ingly common introduction was the large-scale imposition of ring roads, reflecting the emerging domination of planning by traffic solutions. The footprints of new buildings were signifi- cantly larger than those they replaced, and their land coverage was lower. These buildings were often narrow and linear, resulting in a plan form that was new in Britain at that time: the ‘perim- eter block’.The uses of the interiors of these new blocks were usually not specified. Many of these spaces came to function as vast parking reserves, often remaining so today. The style of the new buildings was generally plain and modest, representing a recognisable idiom that has come to be referred to as ‘1950s architecture’.Within the reconstruction period, it is possible to identify a gradual shift from a stripped-down classicism to a moderate mod- ernism, and ultimately to a brutalist modernism in the final rebuilding projects. Developments that deliberately followed vernacular and tra- ditional forms were surprisingly rare and small in scale (for example those following set-back road alignments in Georgian Chichester). In contrast to some European locations, replica- tion of destroyed buildings is very rare in the UK. There are occasional examples in Georgian Bath, Leamington Spa and London, but the influence of SPAB’s criticisms of this approach dominated.⁷ In parallel to this progression in architectural styles was a growing introduction of new types of buildings and urban elements. Some, such as the flatted factories and mechanised parking structures, were not widely adopted. Some were designedly temporary, such as Birmingham’s prefabricated steel car park and flyovers, although the latter persisted into the 1980s. Others, like the enclosed shopping centre, the parking garage, the subway (pedestrian underpass system), and the grade-separated street crossings, became standard elements in British cities in later years; Macclesfield: juxtaposition of the old and the radical new: cover illustration of Dobson Chapman’s 1944 plan (author’s collection) Newcastle: the extent of the proposed rebuilding: new streets and new buildings (adapted from Parr’s 1945 plan) 7 Larkham, PJ and Adams, D (2018) ‘Originality and authenticity in the post-war reconstruction of Britain’, in Bold, J, Larkham, PJ and Pickard, R (eds) Authentic Reconstruction: authenticity, architecture andthe built heritage , Bloomsbury