Introduction

This book explores postwar architectural culture in England through the study of buildings and environments that were designed for children such as playgrounds, schools, children hospitals, community centers, dwellings, and neighborhoods. It focuses on the architecture of childhood in order to move beyond current scholarship of postwar architecture that emphasizes individual authorship, style or building technology, by providing an alternative framework that stresses the role of architecture as a component of the welfare state’s mode of governing the self. It does not aim to establish a separate, self-contained field of knowledge of children’s environments by providing an exhaustive survey of every type of childhood architecture or accounting for the full diversity of approaches in different periods or locations. Rather, this book concentrates on the period between 1935 and 1959 in England, when the architecture of childhood was at the center of architectural discourse in a way that is unique in architectural history.