Mark Swenarton

Mark Swenarton teachers at University College London, where he is setting up a new Master’s course in architectural history. His Homes fit for heroes will be published next year.

Pugin’s Law

Mark Swenarton, 4 December 1980

‘The history of architecture,’ wrote A.W.N. Pugin in 1843, ‘is the history of the world.’ To judge from the three books under review, present-day orthodoxy is something very different. In looking at British architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries, the authors deal, not with the global issues envisaged by Pugin but with the careers of famous (and, in one case, not-so-famous) architects. The history of architecture, we are asked to believe, is the history of the individuals whose names appeared on architectural drawings.

Seeing through Fuller

Nicholas Penny, 30 March 1989

It has been respectable for some while now to admit to being bored by the huge, flat, ‘pure’ abstracts on the white walls of the museums of modern art. And yet non-representational...

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A Better Life

Peter Campbell, 2 April 1981

The ‘homes fit for heroes’ of Mark Swenarton’s title – or some relation of them – can be found on the outskirts of almost any British town. Yet they are more seen...

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