Miles Glendinning, Professor of Architectural Conservation at the University of Edinburgh, discusses his comprehensive work on mass housing's global history. He explores the complex relationship between modern architecture and state power, examining how mass housing became a political tool worldwide. Delving into case studies from Glasgow to Hong Kong, he emphasizes the diverse narratives often overlooked in modernist discourse. Glendinning also critiques the disparities between housing ideals and realities, particularly under socio-political regimes like apartheid, highlighting housing's role in shaping urban life.
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Glendinning's Path to Mass Housing
Miles Glendinning's interest in mass housing stemmed from his background in classics and Roman history.
His research shifted to 20th-century architecture, focusing on multi-story flats in Glasgow and Hong Kong.
insights INSIGHT
Global Research Methodology
Glendinning's global study of mass housing involved fieldwork, photographing thousands of buildings.
These images are openly accessible in the Docomomo International Mass Housing Archive.
insights INSIGHT
Defining Mass Housing
Glendinning defines mass housing by exclusion, focusing on state-supported and modernist buildings.
Private developments or state-sponsored housing lacking modernist design are less central.
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Mass Housing, Modern Architecture and State Power, A Global History
Mass Housing, Modern Architecture and State Power, A Global History
A Global History
Miles Glendinning
Miles Glendinning's "Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History" offers a comprehensive account of the 20th-century global drive to provide mass housing. The book explores the complex interplay between architectural design, political ideologies, and state intervention in shaping housing policies and built environments worldwide. It examines diverse approaches to mass housing across different countries, highlighting both successes and failures. Glendinning's work challenges simplistic narratives, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of mass housing projects and their lasting impact on urban landscapes. The book serves as a valuable resource for understanding the historical context of mass housing and its continuing relevance in contemporary urban planning.
Die Aesthetik der Plata
Die Aesthetik der Plata
Philipp Meiser
Seeing Like a State
How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
James C. Scott
In this book, James C. Scott examines the failures of centrally managed social plans and the destructive consequences of high-modernist ideologies. Scott argues that states often impose simplistic visions on complex societies, ignoring local, practical knowledge and leading to disastrous outcomes. He identifies four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society, high-modernist ideology, authoritarian state power, and a prostrate civil society. The book critiques various utopian projects, including collective farms, compulsory villagization, and urban planning, and advocates for a more nuanced approach that respects local diversity and practical knowledge.
Modern housing
Modern housing
Catherine Bauer
Tower block
Tower block
Miles Glendinning
Stefan Muthesius
Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) is a major work that provides the first comprehensive history of one of modernism's most defining and controversial architectural legacies: the 20th-century drive to provide 'homes for the people'. Vast programs of mass housing – high-rise, low-rise, state-funded, and built in the modernist style – became a truly global phenomenon, leaving a legacy which has suffered waves of disillusionment in the West but which is now seeing a dramatic, 21st-century renaissance in the booming, crowded cities of East Asia.
Exploring the relationship between built form, ideology, and political intervention, it shows how mass housing not only reflected the transnational ideals of the Modernist project, but also became a central legitimizing pillar of nation-states worldwide. In a compelling narrative which likens the spread of mass housing to a 'Hundred Years War' of successive campaigns and retreats, it traces the history around the globe from Europe via the USA, Soviet Union and a network of international outposts, to its ultimate, optimistic resurgence in China and East Asia.
Miles Glendinning is a Professor of Architectural Conservation at the University of Edinburgh and the Director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies.
This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo, a graduate student in urban studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked professionally as a researcher at the University of Chicago and as an urban policy advisor to the City of Chicago.
New Books in Architecture 