David Adams

Peter Larkham

Set within a wider British and international context of post-war reconstruction, The Everyday Experiences of Reconstruction and Regeneration focuses on such debates and experiences in Birmingham and Coventry as they recovered from Second World War bombings and post-war industrial collapse. Including numerous images, Adams and Larkham explore the initial development of the post-Second World War reconstruction projects, which so substantially changed the face of the cities and provided radical new identities. Exploring these cities throughout the post-war period brings into sharp focus the duality of contemporary approaches to regeneration, which often criticise mid-twentieth century ’poorly-conceived’ planning and architectural projects for producing inhuman and unsympathetic schemes, while proposing exactly the type of large-scale regeneration that may potentially create similar issues in the future. This book would be beneficial for academics and students of planning and urban design, particularly those with an interest in post-catastrophe or large-scale reconstruction projects within cities.

From Vision to Reality in Birmingham and Coventry

The Everyday Experiences of Reconstruction and Regeneration

John Bold

Robert Pickard

Notions of authenticity lie at the heart of many questions about heritage and identity in the built environment. These questions are most pertinent when buildings have been destroyed in disaster or war, and the built fabric is being reconstructed to reinstate traditional or historic appearances in place of what was lost. Authentic Reconstruction examines this idea of reconstruction, using it as a prompt to examine a range of deeper issues on heritage and the built environment. From post-WWII reconstruction programmes through to the rebuilding of historic cultural landscapes lost in natural disasters, this collection of essays by heritage specialists provides a wide range of case-studies and discussions. Each presents responses to crises and lessons learned, in order to extrapolate general guidelines for future actions by politicians, architects and planners in reconstructing buildings. The book also looks beyond disaster and war, noting how authenticity bears on political intentions and image building, exploring how reconstruction is used to tell a political or historical story, so conditioning the ways in which the built environment is perceived and appreciated by its users. This is not just about the buildings as bricks and mortar, but about perceptions of identity and the social and historical values which buildings and spaces embody for a richly diverse population. This book will be valuable to all who are concerned with heritage as practitioners or consumers, particularly those concerned with reconstruction and the creation of authentic places and experiences: architects, architectural historians, town planners, preservationists, conservationists, and those involved in heritage management and material culture.

Authenticity, Architecture and the Built Heritage

Authentic Reconstruction

It is a widely held belief that cities must change, or they will wither and die. One of the key problems of urbanization is how to cope with these changes while retaining the structures constructed and maintained by previous generations. Conservation and the City is a study of conservation and change throughout the built environment - city centres, suburbs and even tiny villages - and how the activites of conservation interact with the planning system. Using detailed case studies from Britain and the Westernized world, the author examines some of the key social, economic and psychological ideas which support conservation, as well as studying the urban landscape and the agents of change. Conservation and the City seeks to understand urban conservation, and in doing so presents possible solutions for managing change in the built environment of the future.

Peter Larkham

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