ABSTRACT
At a meeting of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Architectural Science Board in May 1946, the architect Frank Scarlett spoke on ‘The Application of Air Photography to Architecture and Town Planning’.For Scarlett the most dicult task facing the contemporary planner was ‘visualising the many dierent determinant factors’, and to this end he proposed a ‘new instrument, largely developed during the war’:1 aerial photography and the interpretation of aerial views. One of Scarlett’s audience, however, asked whether there was a danger of designing from the air for people on the ground. This paper considers the history of the conceptual basis of the aerial photograph and asks along with Scarlett’s interlocutor whether there were dangers for the planner in the knowledge gained from the air.
