This Changing World: London’s Architecture in the Twentieth Century

Course Outline

21 Apr 2026 – London 1900-1920: The Imperial Metropolis

Lecture

This introductory lecture explores London from the beginning of the C20th to the early 1920s, when the British Empire was at its peak. These decades saw the first re-making of the Victorian city as key parts of London were re-shaped to make the capital city the symbolic and functional heart of empire. New financial and office districts were created around Kingsway and the Aldwych that linked the City of London to the City of Westminster, while buildings such as Admiralty Arch and the Victoria and Albert Museum were built or added to in monumental styles that expressed the power and global reach of early C20^th and set up themes that will be returned to across the course such as what is a British architecture, what is a modern architecture, and what new building types might be needed to shape better a modern nation and its citizens.

28 Apr 2026 – Modernising London Modernising Architecture

Lecture      

The aftermath of the First World War brought new concerns to the planning of the nation. London offers a microcosm of these preoccupations: how to restore the nation’s health and its economy in order to meet the challenge of competitor nations such as the US and Japan, whose industries and economies were far more progressive than those of the UK. A wave of building activity followed which saw new forms of housing, new office and industrial buildings and new forms of public architecture. What form such new architectures should take became a key matter for debate throughout this period.

05 May 2026 – Modern Institutions: Riba HQ, Broadcasting House, Oxford Circus Tube

Walk          

This walk focuses on three distinctive schemes which epitomise modern architecture and new building types in inter-war London. Each represents a particular notion of what it meant to be modern and British, and each reminds us of new experiences of modernity in the wake of the First World War.

12 May 2026 – New Visions for London

Lecture      

A self-consciousness about living in modern times was a characteristic of the 1920s and 1930s. For many architects, this was represented in architectural styles which assimilated new technologies and materials with traditional architectural idioms, especially classicism. For others, this approach was not modern enough and a distinctive brand of British modernism can be seen to have emerged from the late 1920s onwards.

19 May 2026 – A City Reconstructed

Lecture      

London was at the heart of post-war reconstruction and again serves as a microcosm of the nation that would emerge from the destruction of the Second World War. Modernism became the architectural face of the new Welfare State, and architects attained a position of unparalleled influence and importance. Through modern housing, modern sites of leisure, new road schemes and new office blocks, they sought to make a London fit for all its citizens.

26 May 2026 – Landscapes of The New Jerusalem

Walk          

From the late 1940s onwards, London’s South Bank was reconstructed from a derelict industrial site into a modern cultural centre which was intended to set the postwar agenda both architecturally and culturally. The Festival of Britain, held in 1951, was the first manifestation of this impulse, and the visit focuses on the Royal Festival Hall (the main surviving structure of the Festival) and two key projects which were planned in the early 1950s are part of the transformation of the site, the South Bank Arts Centre and the National Theatre.

02 June 2026 – The Postmodern City

Lecture      

By the mid-1970s the modernist recasting of London was a fading dream. Global economic crises, and troubles closer to home, led, ultimately, to more privatised visions of architectural culture as well as more ‘grassroots’ visions of how the built environment might be made. More diverse architectural styles re-emerged, embodied in the development of post-industrial landscapes into new office districts, as happened in London Docklands, or into new cultural quarters, such as Bankside, with Tate Modern at its heart.

09 June 2026 – Canary Wharf

Walk          

Canary Wharf, located on the Isle of Dogs, can be understood as the quintessential site of 1980s British architecture, both in terms of how it was developed and the building types it housed. The visit will explore key buildings on the site and its relationship to the Isle on which it sits and to its business rival, the City of London.