ABSTRACT
This chapter examines four important and interrelated planning exhibitions in the late 1940s and early 1950s: Plans of the Cities of Europe (1946); CIAM 8: The Core (1951); the Town-planning Pavilion at the Festival of Britain (1951); and The Village Centre at the Indian Government’s International Exhibition of Low Cost Housing (1954). Each promoted an approach to planning for post-war reconstruction based on a synthesis of the ideas of the visionary Scottish biologist Patrick Geddes and European modernist ideals as formulated by the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Each exhibition told a dierent story, used dierent techniques and targeted dierent audiences. But taken together with the larger narrative of events which they interconnect, they shed light on the evolution of this blend of Geddessian and CIAM ideas – an image of the ideal community based on cooperation – and how it came to inuence post-war academic and professional trends in urban planning and design, and United Nations community development policy. The narrative highlights the role of Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, British town planner, editor and educator, in the articulation and promotion of this synthesis through this linked series of exhibitions.
