FOLAR
Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Castles in the Air? Landscapes and gardens of public housing

Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Castles in the air? Aspirations and realities of post
war housing and their gardens and landscapes

Five online recorded talks produced by FOLAR and The Gardens Trust, May-June 2023

With a brilliant band of speakers - Dr Catherine Flinn, Luis Diaz, John Boughton, Dr Jan Woudstra and associate professor, Otto Saumarez Smith, these talks span from broad post war politics, the problems of getting UK redeveloped and who held the strings in Whitehall, to a brief history of social housing and the evolving forms and layouts of council estates; there will be details about individual estates, including some contrasting examples from the Netherlands, and what works and what has endured. Influences of the garden city movement will weave its way through the talks, also high rise and low rise, and creating or recreating neighbourhoods. The development of the third wave of the New Towns reveals much about changing social and political attitudes, mobility and the impact of a declining heavy industrial base. What can we learn from all this to help make our new housing better?

4. Urban Renewal in the Netherlands

Post-war modernist housing in the Netherlands is well known as are the suburban housing that materialised, all based on garden city notions of two storey terraced housing and gardens. By the 1970s there was a reaction against this that sought housing in more urban settings while avoiding both high-rise and low-rise schemes. Almere Haven was one such attempt to re-create the atmosphere of older Dutch cities, but this talk concentrates on two schemes, one in Nieuwestraat/ Waterstraat in Zwolle by Aldo van Eyck (1971-5), and Houttuinen by Herman Hertzberger in Amsterdam (1982). These schemes have been praised by architects worldwide but have largely escaped critical review from a landscape perspective. This talk looks at the context, analysing innovation and provides an analysis as to how these schemes have fared.

Dr Jan Woudstra is Reader in Landscape History and Theory at University of Sheffield. He trained in landscape design, horticulture and conservation and practiced as a landscape architect and historian, including the restoration of Chiswick House and Privy Gardens, Hampton Court. He has been teaching part and full time for 35 years, and at University of Sheffield since 1995. Guided by a general concern for the quality of the built environment his research activity has aimed to increase knowledge within the landscape profession and to challenge perceived notions about landscape design and research. He has authored, co-authored and edited many books, most recently, The Politics of Street Trees (Routledge, 2022) and in press is Future Histories, Teaching history in landscape schools.