Mid-Century Britain by Elain Harwood; Sandfuture by Justin Beal review – re-evaluating postwar architecture

Two insightful books defend the architecture of the mid-20th century and the reputation of the man whose two most famous buildings were destroyed on TV“Modern architecture died,” the critic Charles Jencks wrote, “in St Louis, Missouri on 15 July 1972 at 3.32pm (or thereabouts).” This was when, he said, some slab blocks of the city’s Pruitt-Igoe housing scheme were dynamited, it having been decided that their problems of vandalism and building maintenance were too in