Friday, 15 February 2019 at 9:00 am – Friday, 15 February 2019 at 5:30 pm

The Landscape and Architecture of British Post-War Infrastructure - Conference

Conference

Date: Friday 15th February 2019

Time: 09.00-17.30

Location: BZ403, 4th Floor, Benzie Building, Manchester Metropolitan University

Tickets: £55. Combined ticket option available. Click here: http://modernist-society.org/events/ 

In the post-war period large-scale infrastructural projects were built to match prevailing cultures, economic and political demands. The physically engineered landscapes that were produced signposted the rapid socio-economic and technological development following the cessation of conflict. The effect of such unprecedented and widespread infrastructural projects on both rural and urban landscapes was comparable to the impact of the industrial revolution in the UK.

The scope of the work not only impacted on the physical landscape, but also the collaborative roles of architecture, landscape architecture, engineering and planning professionals. Co-operation and co-production were key in the British context and this mode of working informed new ideas and methods which in turn produced exceptional landscape compositions.

This multi-disciplinary conference and accompanying keynote event, supported by the Paul Mellon Centre, in collaboration with The Modernist Society, and hosted at the Manchester School of Architecture, will explore the relationships between landscape and architectural design in the production of infrastructure. Over four sessions examining Power, Roads, Urban Infrastructure and Transnational Infrastructure, speakers will explore the form, type, material, topography, composition and the relationships of these topics with the socio-cultural, political and economic settings of the post-war period.

Tickets can be purchased for all events separately, but there is also a combined ticket. Ticket sales will be administered via The Modernist Society and more details can be found on their website at http://modernist-society.org/events/

Session 1 – Power

• Chair – Dr. Martin Dodge (Manchester)
• Juliana Kei – Pylon-Spotting in Architectural Magazines c.1950
• Linda Ross – Post-war planning in the nuclear north, 1954-63
• Laura Coucill – Magnox: the Legacy of the CEGB
• Luca Csepely-Knorr – Landscapes of coal as ‘third nature’

Session 2 – Roads

• Chair – Bruno Notteboom (KU Leuven)
• Megan McHugh - National Identity, Landscape and the Early Motorway in England
• Peter Merriman – Motorway modern: landscape architecture, movement and the aesthetics of roads in post-war Britain
• Richard Brook – Scammonden: Landscape Co-production in the Motorway Age

Session 3 – Urban Infrastructures

• Chair – Prof. Nick Dunn (Lancaster)
• Wendy Tippett - Cumberland Basin Bridges and Ashton Gate Junction, Bristol 
• Mike Dring - Wavy Concrete Panels - Cultural Anchors in the Post-War Urban Landscape
• Janina Gosseye – Multimodal/Multifunctional Megastructures Reimagining Flows and Nodes in Post-war British New Towns

Session 4 - Transnational Infrastructure

• Chair – Prof. Stephen Graham (Newcastle)
• Gary Boyd - Infrastructure in the making of modern Ireland
• Neta Feniger and Roy Kozlovsky – The influence of Sir Colin Buchanan on the planning of Tel Aviv 
• Awni Kirti Patni – Landscapes of dams in (independent) India