ABSTRACT
By the early 1950s the high aspirations of both these positions had dwindled and given way to a concern with the possible and the ordinary, as expressed by a British group that came to be termed ‘The Independent Group’ and included a number of the younger generation’s artists and architects. The artists included Edouardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson, while among the architects were Alison and Peter Smithson.3 The group, meeting by invitation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 1952-1955, shared expansive interests in popular culture. The Smithsons were in the process of completing their rst major building, the Secondary School at Hunstanton, Norfolk. Photographs by John Maltby show it according to the conventions of the published photograph, detached from site and use: a town school with no town, a school gymnasium with no children, washbasins pristine and unused. In contrast, other images of the school by Nigel Henderson demonstrate quite dierent interests: a building in process, revealing
its construction, and with contingent events allowed; a face at a window, a wheelbarrow of bricks, a pile of builders’ rubble (Figure 20.1).4
