The South Bank Exhibition, London 1951: the viewpoint of The Architectural Review

Authors

  • Carlos Montes Serrano Catedrático. Universidad de Valladolid
  • Víctor Lafuente Sánchez Associate Professor in the University of Valladolid.
  • Daniel López Bragado Associate Professor at the University of Valladolid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.2019133873

Keywords:

London, Southbank, Exhibition, 1951

Abstract

The Festival of Britain exhibition held in London in 1951 occupies a noteworthy place in the history of British architecture of the post-war period. This is because it constituted the starting point for the urban renewal of London’s South Bank. It was given strong support and great prominence by The Architectural Review, which published several articles and a monographic issue about it, in order to show how the master plan for the exhibition matched the ideals of Visual Planning and Townscape that the journal had been putting forward for some years previously. However, it was also the subject of criticism from a group of young architects, headed by Reyner Banham, who reacted to it by advocating an alternative style of architecture that was termed New Brutalism.

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Author Biographies

Carlos Montes Serrano, Catedrático. Universidad de Valladolid

Carlos Montes Serrano (1952), Architect and PhD Architect from the University of Navarra. Tenured Professor and Full Professor (1990) in Architectural Representation in the University of Valladolid. Dean of the School of Architecture of Valladolid (1996-1990) and Head of the Department of Urbanism and Representation (2004-2009). He has focused his research in Historiography of Architecture, and History of Architectural Representation.

Víctor Lafuente Sánchez, Associate Professor in the University of Valladolid.

Víctor A. Lafuente Sánchez (1984), Architect (2008) and PhD Architect  with international mention (2013), Bachelor of Musicology by the University of La Rioja (2011), and Master's Degree in Cultural Economy and Cultural Management by the University of Valladolid (2012), with extraordinary prize end of Master. Associate Professor at the University of Valladolid. Member of the Department of Urbanism and Representation of Architecture.

Daniel López Bragado, Associate Professor at the University of Valladolid

Daniel López Bragado (1984), Architect (2008), Master's Degree in Architectural Research (2013), and PhD Architect (2016) from the University of Valladolid. Associate Professor at the University of Valladolid. Member of the Department of Urbanism and Representation of Architecture of Valladolid, and of the Studies Institute Florián de Ocampo of the Diputación of Zamora. His research focuses on the study of the urban transformations of the city of Zamora.

References

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Banham, Reyner. 1955. The New Brutalism. The Architectural Review 708 (December): 354-61.

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Published

2019-09-28

How to Cite

Montes Serrano, C., Lafuente Sánchez, V., & López Bragado, D. (2019). The South Bank Exhibition, London 1951: the viewpoint of The Architectural Review. ZARCH. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, (13), 50–61. https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.2019133873

Issue

No. 13 (2019): The traces of the ephemeral

Section

Topic papers

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