Date of Award
Spring 6-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Amelyn Ng
Second Advisor
Debbie Chen
Abstract
In the middle of the 20th century, a rare confluence of political, economic, and cultural forces aligned to produce a slate of highly progressive policy and design agendas for social housing in the United Kingdom. A widely shared utopian ambition to house all people with dignity was made real by a motivated government and its well-resourced planning and architecture offices, tasked with bringing this vision to bear in the built environment. In London, the London County Council Architect’s Office and later local council-led architecture and planning offices were at the forefront of designing and delivering high quality, formally ambitious housing for all residents of the city.
Despite this proud legacy of applied innovation and progressive thinking, a decades-long pattern of disinvestment, deregulation, and government-backed hostility towards social housing and the people who live in it has generated a nationwide housing crisis. The country’s stock of social housing has been systematically diminished - parceled out for private sale to individuals and investors, transferred to private non-profit management organizations, or demolished altogether. In pursuit of ever more profitable private housing, London boroughs implement “regeneration” plans that force long-standing residents from their homes, and see them displaced within London, or forced beyond the city limits altogether.
What forces have made it possible to convert one of the world’s leading visionary social housing programs from a public good to a private asset? Why have supposed strategies for renewal resulted in so much disruption, demolition, and displacement? What role have architects played in this transformation? What might an architecture and design office that operates outside of the demolition-decline binary look like?
Recommended Citation
Pelliccia, Adrian, "A Dispatch from the Site Office" (2024). Masters Theses. 1228.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1228
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