Part 2 – Brutalism and the Transformed City
Lecture Summary:
This lecture explores how architects and planners of Britain’s 1960’s “Brutalist” generation imaged bold new urban futures, from multi-level cities with vast megastructures to radical attempts to make the car a central part of city life. It looks at projects like the Barbican and Hook New Town, along with influential plans and reports that shaped city centers in Newcastle, Liverpool, and Blackburn. Driven by post-war optimism and faith in progress, these ideas promised a new kind of city. The reality, however, was often controversial, leaving behind concrete visions that still divide opinion today.
Speaker: Dr. Otto Saumarez Smith
Biography
Dr. Otto Saumarez Smith is an architectural and urban historian whose work explores modern British history through the lens of the built environment. He is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, where he teaches and researches the political, social, and cultural histories embedded in everyday buildings and cities. His first book, Boom Cities: Architect Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain (OUP, 2019), was a History Today Book of the Year and widely reviewed. He is currently completing a second monograph on housing, sociology, and public-sector expertise in post-war Britain, and is co-editor of The Modern British City, forthcoming in 2025. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Trustee of the Twentieth Century Society.