City of Towers – Christopher Booker BBC 1979 – film notes
August 26th, 2011
Footnotes (by blog author while writing it up)
“Under a perpetual blanket of smoke”
Ebenezer Howard – Letchworth. The Garden City 1903
Tony Garnier – What is a city for – zoning 1904
Skyscrapers early years of C20th
H.G.Wells – The Sleeper Awakes 1898 – London in 2100
Italian futurists – machines
Antonio Sant’Elia – A manifesto of a futurist architecture 1914
Russian Revolution – large buildings, skyscrapers from communism
Manhattan skyline – skyscrapers from capitalists
Germany – Mies van der Roe & Walter Gropius
August Perret – City of Towers – early 1920s
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret – Le Corbusier (crow like) – early 1920s
“Towards a new architecture” – Corbusier – 1923
“The City of Tomorrow” – Corbusier – 1925
This stupendous vision – an entirely new kind of society
Fritz Lang – Metropolis “as the most appalling nightmare” – 1920s
CIAM – avant garde architects on a Mediterranean cruise in 1933
From Here to Modernity
August 22nd, 2011
Click image to see full Wordle
Kirsty Wark charts the rise and fall of the Modern movement from the 1930s to its fall from popularity, in three half hour programmes made for the Open University.
Here follows a comprehensive list of the buildings featured in the programme, in the form of stills. It is not by any means a review of the programme but rather intended as an introduction by way of showing the content.
Title shot – click above for larger image
The link to the Open University details about the series is here:-
Utopia London – Tom Cordell
August 13th, 2011
Composite image of architects featured in the film
“There was a time when London united around the vision of a better future. A group of young idealists were fusing science and art to build an egalitarian city. This documentary is their story.”
So runs the tag line from the trailer page of the website and this motivation comes across from the film as a whole.
Sheffield – All in a day – The City – BBC 1973
July 30th, 2011
This 45 minute documentary was shot in one day on Wednesday 5th September 1973, using several film crews each with a different assignment. One to follow a man retiring on his 65th birthday, the hospital, the Police service, a funeral,
Hyde Park flats
Where We Live Now – City of Towers
March 10th, 2011
For over thirty years I have lived with the memory of this excellent documentary City of Towers and just occasionally I have a glimmer of hope that it will be shown again. Today the page was visited by somebody at the BBC.
A visitor from webgw3.thls.bbc.co.uk (132.185.240.123)
arrived from www.google.co.uk“WHERE WE LIVE NOW:1:CITY OF TOWERS” 1-10,
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/doc/CityofTowers.htm
at 11:12:06 on Thursday, March 10, 2011.A visitor from webgw3.thls.bbc.co.uk (132.185.240.123)
arrived from www.google.co.uk“WHERE WE LIVE NOW:1:CITY OF TOWERS” 1-10,
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/doc/wwln.php
at 11:11:49 on Thursday, March 10, 2011.
If you have a copy of this film and are willing to show it, even as a private showing please get in touch. This film was a landmark of its time in revealing the inadequacies and destruction wrought by an over enthusiastic application of Modernism to housing and city centres and the history that was destroyed in the process. Christopher Booker was one of the first to recognise the damage being done.
UPDATE: I now have a copy of this film, read more about it at the following page:-
Utopia London – Tom Cordell
December 15th, 2010
Cathy Come Home – reviewed
July 16th, 2010
“Now I was pregnant again, some would say it was wrong to have another kiddy when you’re overcrowded as it is. But I don’t think so, I think kiddies are God’s gift, you don’t do right to deprive anyone of the chance of life, love’s what’s important in a child’s life, love is more important to a child than nice surroundings, I know, because I lived in what they call a respectable home, and I didn’t have it”.
The New Jerusalem – A home of your own – 1995
July 13th, 2010
UPDATE: Watch it on YouTube -> New Jerusalem
“And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” – Revelation 21:2 – King James Bible
This fifty minute documentary covering the period from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until the arrival of Thatcherism in 1979 provides a comprehensive look at both the motives and the actions of the major players in the field of slum clearance and post war reconstruction with a particular emphasis on Birmingham and its problems.
Title shot – click above for larger image – original VHS
So begins this wonderful evocation of the feelings at the time that here was a new world to build.
Homes for Heroes – documentary review
July 12th, 2010
This documentary first broadcast by the BBC in 2005 is a compilation of film clips linked together by a commentary from architectural critics and is an attempt to put together a coherent account of the events following the Second World War when the country was in great need of new housing.
The film lasts one hour and what follows is a list of the main subject headings with reference to the films from which the clips are taken. The film shares many of its clips with High Rise Dreams reviewed earlier in this blog, though that film being half the length.
Homes for heroes opens with a jaunty jazz tune and Oliver Cox, one of the LCC architects of the 1950s saying that “there was a very heady feeling at the time, that we were building a new Britain”.
High Rise Dreams 2003 – documentary review
July 9th, 2010
This film made in 2003 is a potted history of the LCC architects’ department at County Hall and their designs and achievements in post-war housing, concentrating on the landmark estates and new towns, in addition to projects by others in Sheffield and Newcastle:-
- Harlow new town
- Alton East Roehampton
- Alton West Roehampton
- Keeling House Bethnal Green – Denys Lasdun
- Park Hill Sheffield
- Tower blocks and system building
- Alexandra Road Housing – Neve Brown
- Byker Estate Newcastle – Ralph Erskine
- Trellick and Balfron Towers – Erno Goldfinger