About this Event
Up in the Air tells the story of Britain’s multistorey council housing from its beginnings to the present day. Across the decades, the high rise has symbolised the welfare state for better or worse. Here, Holly Smith takes the residents’ perspective, capturing the human side of high-rise Britain. Interrogating the complex inheritance of mid-century urban reconstruction, Smith shows how these buildings became a crucible in which the welfare state was shaped and reimagined.
She examines the scattering of a local community during the construction of Park Hill in Sheffield in the 1950s. The outrage that followed the Ronan Point tower block collapse of 1968. The formation of a pioneering tenants’ co-operative in the 1970s to revive a crumbling estate during the closure of the London docks. The advocacy of a National Tower Blocks Network agitating for high-rise safety in the 1980s and ’90s. The excitement of early digital culture in a Liverpudlian pensioners’ high-rise internet television show in the 2000s and the fierce battle to defend estates from demolition in the 2010s.
Dr. Holly Smith is a historian of architecture and protest. She is a Fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. Her research has been awarded the Duncan Tanner Prize by Oxford University Press and the Hawksmoor Medal by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. She holds a PhD from University College London.
Link to the book:
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3278-up-in-the-air
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Unit 55 - The Cambridge Room, The Grafton Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
