Single Aspect Blog

“Back in 1979, I made a BBC documentary called City of Towers, charting how the futuristic dreams crystallised in the Twenties by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier had led to the high-rise nightmare that blighted Britain’s cities in the Sixties. The film won some acclaim – not least, surprisingly, from some of the modern architects whose work it had featured, from Maxwell Fry to Richard Seifert, creator of the Centre Point tower.”

“But when, some years later, there were calls for the programme to be repeated, Mr Yentob startled a BBC meeting by expostulating that the film would only ever be shown again “over my dead body”.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11833042/A-fitting-end-for-Alan-Yentob.html

Now this in the Guardian
Alan Yentob: the last impresario

City of Towers – reviewed

City of Towers – Film notes

City of Towers – Christopher Booker / Christopher Martin
Click here to play or download

Three streets in the country – Michael Frayn / Dennis Marks(d.)

New Town, Home Town – Colin Ward  – BBC – Watch on iPlayer

Architecture for Everyman – Patrick Nuttgens
Click here to play or download

The Country and the City –  Raymond Williams

The New Jerusalem: A place in the class

Click here to play or download

The New Jerusalem: For richer for poorer

Click here to play or download

The New Jerusalem: Safe in their hands

The New Jerusalem: A home of your own

Dilapidated Dwelling – Patrick Keiller
Click here to play or download

Flight from Utopia Part 1 – Patrick Nuttgens

Click here to play or download

Flight from Utopia Part 2 – Patrick Nuttgens

Click here to play or download

Britain on Film: The Home Front

Click here to play or download

High-rise vandalism: who is to blame?

Richard West

Two questions remain unanswered by Christopher Booker’s marvellous TV documentary City of Towers, on the destruction of Britain since the war. Why has it taken , so long for public opinion, exemplified by the BBC, to wake up to the menace. of planners and property developers? And is the destruction of cities a universal phenomenon, as Christopher Booker implied in the film, or something peculiar to the British Isles?

. . . read on

The Spectator Archive 24 FEBRUARY 1979, Page 15