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Two Swedish Modernisms on English Housing Estates: Cultural Transfer and Visions of Urban Living, 1945–1969

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2015

NATASHA VALL
NATASHA VALL*
Affiliation:
Institute of Design Culture and the Arts, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, TS13BA, UK; [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the transfer of Swedish concepts of urban modernity to British cities after 1945. It shows how an affinity between design and architecture elites facilitated the transfer of key concepts that were mediated in cities. Moreover, it argues that the often contested transfer of Swedish modern architecture and design to northern English cities initially meshed with municipal ambitions to improve working-class housing and culture. Thereafter the influence of Swedish modern was continued in altered form by the preponderance of Swedish prefabrication techniques in the construction of new poured concrete and high-rise estates during the 1960s. These aspirations to improve the urban environment with Scandinavian examples of good living often magnified the difficulties of modernising the industrial conurbations of the north.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 24 , Special Issue 4: Urban Societies in Europe , November 2015 , pp. 517 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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88 T. Dan Smith was charged with corruption in 1970 and 1973, serving six years in prison from 1974.

89 Emblematic of this was the Anglo-Swedish architect Ralph Erskine's redevelopment of Byker in Newcastle during the 1970s.