Lecture: Traffic Architecture: The Car and the City in 1960s Britain
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| Erasmus + TEMA Master Program and CHIPPC research group Invite for a lecture |
| Traffic Architecture: The Car and the City in 1960s Britain |
| Simon Gunn (Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester) |
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In the late 1950s Britain entered the ‘motor age’ of mass automobility. This talk explores the fears that the invasion of cars would destroy the historic character of British towns and cities and discusses the responses of politicians, architects and planners to the threat, including the internationally renowned Buchanan report of 1963, Traffic in Towns. Buchanan’s report proposed a new ‘traffic architecture’ for the motorized city, championing innovations such as ‘environmental areas’ and ‘megastructures’. In the second part of the paper I shall argue that cars were simultaneously redesigned in the 1960s to emphasis a new comfort and a closer relationship to the suburban home. In the process a new hybrid urban landscape emerged – the modern city seen from the car window. |
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Wednesday, 24th May, Faculty of Arts, Hybernská 3, room 202, 15:30 (Second session of Seminar with prof. Gunn, which starts at 14:00) |