ABSTRACT
When F. R. S. Yorke published The Modern House in England (1944), he acknowledged that the houses in 'the new manner' which he championed were not yet popular, but he believed they represented the architecture of the
'ideal homes' of the future (Yorke 1944). These two quotations reveal the divided fate of the Modern house some fifty years later. On the one hand, as housing to live in, Modern housing has become profoundly unpopular. In some cases it has become such a potent symbol of contemporary social evils that it has been destroyed and replaced with something which it is hoped that people will like. As a major survey of high-rise housing in Britain concluded, 'By the early 1970s, Modern public housing seemed to have lost its validity across the entire spectrum of endeavour, theoretical and practical' (Glendinning and Muthesius 1994: 324). In contrast, its 'cultural value' is being reasserted by the cultural elite as part of the nation's architectural 'heritage'. Individual Modernist houses and even whole council estates are being hailed as great works of twentieth-century art which must be preserved in their original form and condition.
