Abstract

The next event organised by the Public & Popular History seminar is a panel debate, “Architectural Heritage or Awful Houses?”, this Wednesday, 7 November, at 5pm, in the Knox Shaw Room in Sidney Sussex College. The two panellists are Owen Hatherley, journalist and author of ‘Militant Modernism’ (2009) and ‘A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain’ (2010); and Prof Andrew Saint, architectural historian and editor of the Survey of London (English Heritage); the debate will be chaired by Prof Peter Mandler, author of ‘The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home’ (1997) and President-Elect of the Royal Historical Society. They will be discussing whether we should treat postwar architecture that contemporaries hate(d) as useful heritage in the same way that we treat earlier periods of architecture that contemporaries loved. Lurking underneath this question is the struggle over the politics of heritage: who decides, & on which grounds, what to preserve of our physical environment. It promises to be a lively debate, around images of some rather spectacular/controversial buildings. Everybody very welcome! For more information, please contact Dr Bernhard Fulda (bdf20@cam.ac.uk).