ABSTRACT
In this visual essay, we will consider some of the aesthetic dimensions of essential infrastructure during the early Cold War era, looking at the design and positioning of telecommunications facilities in British cities and in the countryside in-between. Using a range of unpublished historic photography, architectural materials and planning maps, we examine the distinctive forms of telecommunication structures and buildings including skeletal steel antennas, concrete microwave towers, hardened exchange facilities and underground bunkers that were constructed to ensure the continuity of government communications in times of civil crisis and nuclear war. Much of this new infrastructure was physically prominent in the landscape but while they were superficially visible to all their underlying purposes in a time of emergencies were kept secret from the public. As with much in the material expression of Cold War they were necessarily hiding in the plain sight.
