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Planning permanent air raid precautions: architecture, air war and the changing perceptions of British cities in the late 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2015

ADAM PAGE
ADAM PAGE*
Affiliation:
Leuphana Universität, MECS, Scharnhorstr. 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany
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Abstract:

This article considers how the imagination and expectation of future air raids impacted upon the perception of the built environment, and asks how the boundaries between peace and war, and thus military and civilian, began to be dissolved in this context. It examines the interactions between architects, planners and government officials about how the design of cities and buildings might change in an age of air power. By looking at changes and continuities either side of the 1938 Munich crisis, it examines how the civilian space of cities was recast in anticipation of war.

Type
Dyos Prize winner 2014
Information
Urban History , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 117 - 134
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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20 The papers of the structural precautions committee are in TNA, Home Office (HO) 211/1–6. British architects generally took a more central role in debates over the protection of civilians from air raids than elsewhere in Europe where these discussions were also being held, Cohen, Architecture in Uniform, 161.

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