19 January 2026
Overview
In Britain, during the post-war period, many urban design professionals were architect-planners. A considerable proportion of these were employed by local authorities. A drive by the state to use legislation to control and influence the shape of development created a very specific set of political circumstances. Central government policy was filtered and interpreted by local government councillors and their officers and each town or city approached this in a different way. The legislation and the training enabled a very particular mode of urban design that was characterised by ambitious three-dimensional visions. Such ambition was also underpinned by non-statutory guidance that reflected the zeitgeist for vertical separation in urban settings, such as Sir Colin Buchanan’s Traffic in Towns.
In this talk, Richard Brook examined Manchester as a case, through which to explore the nested tiers and networked relationships of government, governance and the private sector in the creation of new city space. Manchester’s 1945 Plan, directed by City Engineer and Surveyor, Rowland Nicholas, was one of the most comprehensive in Britain, yet it faltered due to a lack of capital, lack of statutory powers and lack of material resources. In the 1960s, Manchester’s first Chief Planner, John Millar, revisited the urban design of the entire central area with a team of talented young planners, recruited from the region. Their work was arguably greater in its scope and definition than that produced in 1945 and shaped the city for the next 50 years. Though only partially realised, the framework for development established in the mid-1960s and approved in 1968, set the tone for almost all the changes to follow for the next 50 years.
Now, as the palimpsestic traces of earlier visions are increasingly obscured by the pace of contemporary urbanisation, using rich visual material collected over the last three decades of research, Richard positioned architectural histories alongside planning and urban histories. He showed how central government legislation was interpreted spatially by Manchester’s planners using drawings and models and how these visions continued to inform development well into the twenty-first century. In so doing, he presented an inverted archaeology of the city that traces the patterns established on paper and the long-term physical residue of these gestures.
Professor Richard Brook
Richard Brook is Professor in Architecture at Lancaster University where he is Director of Research. He acts as an advisor to the Modernist Society and is a member of the Twentieth Century Society’s Casework Committee. He is also a registered architect and architectural historian whose research reflects a grasp of the complexities and realities of urban development. Much of his work concerns the influence of the post-war state on space, form and society and he has advanced the term ‘mainstream modern’ as a vehicle through which to describe a certain set of architectural outcomes amidst specific political circumstances. His recent book, The Renewal of Post War Manchester (MUP, 2025), was shortlisted for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain’s Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion, and is described as ‘a text that lucidly marries the specific with the general, blending intimate knowledge of place with acute understanding of key developments’. He has written widely on infrastructure and landscape, underwriting his holistic view of the built environment, that accepts the diverse array of forces acting on its production. His co-curated exhibition, Architecture for the People: Manchester City Architect’s Department, 1902-2003, embodies these interests and is showing at Manchester Central Reference Library until March 2026.