Between 1975 and 1982, The Open University broadcast a series of televised courses on the genealogy of the modern movement: A305, History of Architecture and Design 1890–1939. Through twenty-four programs aired on BBC 2, the course team aimed to offer students and viewers a critical understanding of the intentions and views of the world that fuelled the modern movement, and to present some of the alternative traditions that flourished alongside it. The course nevertheless avoided the more dismissive positions of its contemporaries, while engaging political issues of its day such postwar urban planning and the housing question.
Returning Series
History of Architecture and Design
February 15, 1975
October 18, 1975
1
25
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Housing has been the most distinctive interest of the Modern Movement in architecture; yet, despite the good intentions of the theorists, the results of this interest have not always been successful. Television broadcast 24, the final programme of the course, studies three post-war housing developments which are very different in character: the L.C.C.’s Roehampton Estate; Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower in North Kensington and Ralph Erskine’s new estate at Byker, Newcastle Upon Tyne.
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