LEADER 04031oam 2200577I 450 001 9910154985903321 005 20240505161514.0 010 $a1-351-94525-4 010 $a1-138-27717-7 010 $a1-315-25817-X 024 7 $a10.4324/9781315258171 035 $a(CKB)3710000000965736 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4758203 035 $a(OCoLC)973028004 035 $a(BIP)63365695 035 $a(BIP)40019540 035 $a(EXLCZ)993710000000965736 100 $a20180706e20162013 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $2rdacontent 182 $2rdamedia 183 $2rdacarrier 200 10$aDemolishing Whitehall $eLeslie Martin, Harold Wilson and the architecture of White Heat /$fAdam Sharr, Stephen Thornton 205 $a1st ed. 210 1$aLondon :$cRoutledge,$d2016. 215 $a1 online resource (325 pages) $cillustrations 300 $aFirst published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing. 311 08$a1-4094-2387-5 311 08$a1-351-94526-2 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $a1. Introduction -- 2. A hope of better times and more spacious days -- 3. Components of a plan -- 4. Leslie Martin and science of architectural form -- 5. Lost ina vortex -- 6. Conclusion. 330 $aThis book is about a lost world, albeit one less than 50 years old. It is the story of a grand plan to demolish most of Whitehall, London's historic government district, and replace it with a ziggurat-section megastructure built in concrete. In 1965 the architect Leslie Martin submitted a proposal to Charles Pannell, Minister of Public Building and Works in Harold Wilson's Labour government, for the wholesale reconstruction of London's 'Government Centre'. Still reeling from war damage, its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century palaces stood as the patched-up headquarters of an imperial bureaucracy which had once dominated the globe. Martin's plan - by no means modest in conception, scope or scale - proposed their replacement with a complex that would span the roads into Parliament Square, reframing the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. The project was not executed in the manner envisaged by Martin and his associates, although a surprising number of its proposals were implemented. But the un-built architecture is examined here for its insights into a distinctive moment in British history, when a purposeful technological future seemed not just possible but imminent, apparently sweeping away an anachronistic Edwardian establishment to be replaced with a new meritocracy forged in the 'white heat of technology'. The Whitehall plan had implications well beyond its specific site. It was imagined by its architects as a scientific investigation into ideal building forms for the future, an important development in their project to unify science and art. For the political actors, it represented a tussle between government departments, between those who believed that Britain needed to discard much of its Victorian and Edwardian decoration in the name of 'professionalization' and those who sought to preserve its ornate finery. Demolishing Whitehall investigates these tensions between ideas of technology and history, science and art, socialism and el 606 $aPublic buildings$zEngland$zLondon 606 $aArchitecture and state$zGreat Britain$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aTechnology$xSocial aspects$zGreat Britain$xHistory$y20th century 607 $aWhitehall (London, England)$xBuildings, structures, etc 607 $aLondon (England)$xBuildings, structures, etc 615 0$aPublic buildings 615 0$aArchitecture and state$xHistory 615 0$aTechnology$xSocial aspects$xHistory 676 $a725.10942132 700 $aSharr$b Adam$0944517 701 $aThornton$b Stephen$f1970-$0976326 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910154985903321 996 $aDemolishing Whitehall$92223931 997 $aUNINA