British Design: Tradition and Modernity after 1948

(Paperback)

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British Design brings together leading international scholars, designers and journalists to provide new perspectives on British design in the last sixty years, and how it at once looked back to the past with the continuation of traditions that spoke to Britain's design heritage, and looked forwards with the embrace of modernist and postmodernist style. The book responds to and develops new ways of understanding the recent history of design in Britain, with case studies on designed spaces and objects, including domestic interiors, retail spaces, schools and university buildings and transport. The contributors address significant moments and phenomena in the historical and social history of British design, from the rise and fall of the English Country House style and the Brutalist architectural boom of the 1960s to the modern shopping space, and consider the work of key contemporary designers ranging from Tommy Roberts to Thomas Heatherwick. British Design provides new criticism and analysis on how design, from the immediate post-war period to the present day, has developed and changed how we live and how we interact with the spaces in which we live. British Design is split into 13 chapters and is richly illustrated with 65 images, 16 of which are in full colour.

Reviews

This compact volume represents good value for money with many fresh ideas and perceptive overviews. As a handbook of ideas about the history of British design from the post-war years to the 2010s, it is useful and thought provoking and gathers together leading experts, emerging and established researchers and polemicists. * Journal of Design History *
Anyone who's wondered how the Britain of utility furniture and wartime rationing managed to evolve into Cool Britannia will find this a remarkable book. The authors work from case studies, achieving a remarkably nuanced portrait of a country in transition. From the trend setting crafts for sale at the London boutique Primavera to the "fun furniture" available at Mr Freedom, the examples presented in this edited volume are like a breath of fresh air; they also provide a counterweight to older, decorous studies of British "good taste." The interiors of post-war country house decorators like John Fowler and modernist architects like Mary Crowley and David Medd receive equal treatment. British interior design emerges as transgressive and eccentric, romantic and--at its best--ingenious. -- Elizabeth Guffey, State University of New York at Purchase, USA

Author Bio

Christopher Breward is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Edinburgh and Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, both UK. Fiona Fisher is a researcher in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Kingston University, UK. Ghislaine Wood is Deputy Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, UK.