Alistair Fair
Biographic Data
| ID | 5944100 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alistair Fair |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alistair |
| FAMILY NAME | Fair |
| SIGNATURE | FAIR A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8884-0965 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
‘Making architecture relevant’
Essex County Council’s Design Guide for Residential Areas, published in 1973, is best known as the progenitor of what became the standard style of 1980s English low-rise housing, featuring brick, tile, timber boarding, and ‘vernacular’ touches. Yet as much the image of the architecture encouraged by the Design Guide suggests a ‘retreat’ from modernism, to see the guide solely in those terms overlooks three key elements of the publication, which a…
The opportunity and desire to buy
This article explores the role of the post-war new towns in Scotland in providing people with the opportunity to own their own homes. Most importantly, it traces the development of this policy prior to the 'Right to Buy' of the early 1980s when tenants were offered substantial discounts by local authorities, housing associations and crucially, new town development corporations. The article challenges the dominance of rented tenure in existing acc…
‘The core’
This article is the second part of a discussion of what we term the ‘centre-idea’. This idea, we argue, was fundamental to British modernist architecture and planning praxis from the mid-1940s onwards. It represented an active spatial environment in which people could develop their selves and their interests at a time of expanding democracy, which required new forms of community association. We locate this idea’s roots in the pre-war British volu…
‘The core’
This is the first of a pair of articles in which we argue that what we term the ‘centre-idea’ was fundamental to British modernist architecture and planning thought from the mid-1940s onwards. We locate this idea’s roots in the pre-1939 British voluntary sector, specifically the activities of the Peckham Experiment and the Pioneer Health Centre which housed it. We evidence its long-term influence on post-1945 architecture and planning in the invi…
Stonehouse
This article examines the proposals for Stonehouse, designated as the sixth Scottish new town in 1972 but abandoned in 1976. Several themes emerge, with lessons for the wider urban and political histories of 1970s Britain. First, the evolving plans demonstrate the ‘malleability’ of the post-war ‘new town idea’, conceptually and organizationally. Second, cancellation was the consequence of short-term factors, changing strategic objectives and loca…
‘University in the city’
In 1962, the University of Edinburgh proposed that the area adjacent to its central campus should be designated as a Comprehensive Development Area, with the planner (and university senior lecturer) Percy Johnson-Marshall showing how historic tenements could be replaced by a new urban landscape of slab blocks situated on an elevated pedestrian podium above new roads, creating a seamless continuum between the university and the city. The proposals…
Modernization of Our Hospital System’
This article augments the literature on the British experience of planning by examining attempts to plan the hospital system between 1962 and 1977. The Hospital Plan for England and Wales of 1962 proposed the construction of a suite of new 'District General Hospitals'. Underpinning this proposal was a belief in the value of standardized designs and construction methods, both of which were subsequently investigated in detail by the Ministry of Hea…
Jeanne Kisacky, Rise of the Modern Hospital. An Architectural History of Health and Healing, 1870–1940
For those who designed and worked in nineteenth-century European and North American hospitals, architecture could be both dangerous and curative. Dark, poorly ventilated spaces were seen to be unhealthy. Light and air would counter infection and speed patient recovery; so too might the use of ‘hygienic’ materials. The advent of germ theory initially did little to change these ideas. However, by the early twentieth century a new understanding of t…
Modernization of Our Hospital System’
This article augments the literature on the British experience of planning by examining attempts to plan the hospital system between 1962 and 1977. The Hospital Plan for England and Wales of 1962 proposed the construction of a suite of new 'District General Hospitals'. Underpinning this proposal was a belief in the value of standardized designs and construction methods, both of which were subsequently investigated in detail by the Ministry of Hea…
Stonehouse
This article examines the proposals for Stonehouse, designated as the sixth Scottish new town in 1972 but abandoned in 1976. Several themes emerge, with lessons for the wider urban and political histories of 1970s Britain. First, the evolving plans demonstrate the ‘malleability’ of the post-war ‘new town idea’, conceptually and organizationally. Second, cancellation was the consequence of short-term factors, changing strategic objectives and loca…
Jeanne Kisacky, Rise of the Modern Hospital. An Architectural History of Health and Healing, 1870–1940
For those who designed and worked in nineteenth-century European and North American hospitals, architecture could be both dangerous and curative. Dark, poorly ventilated spaces were seen to be unhealthy. Light and air would counter infection and speed patient recovery; so too might the use of ‘hygienic’ materials. The advent of germ theory initially did little to change these ideas. However, by the early twentieth century a new understanding of t…
Modernization of Our Hospital System’
This article augments the literature on the British experience of planning by examining attempts to plan the hospital system between 1962 and 1977. The Hospital Plan for England and Wales of 1962 proposed the construction of a suite of new 'District General Hospitals'. Underpinning this proposal was a belief in the value of standardized designs and construction methods, both of which were subsequently investigated in detail by the Ministry of Hea…
‘University in the city’
In 1962, the University of Edinburgh proposed that the area adjacent to its central campus should be designated as a Comprehensive Development Area, with the planner (and university senior lecturer) Percy Johnson-Marshall showing how historic tenements could be replaced by a new urban landscape of slab blocks situated on an elevated pedestrian podium above new roads, creating a seamless continuum between the university and the city. The proposals…
Stonehouse
This article examines the proposals for Stonehouse, designated as the sixth Scottish new town in 1972 but abandoned in 1976. Several themes emerge, with lessons for the wider urban and political histories of 1970s Britain. First, the evolving plans demonstrate the ‘malleability’ of the post-war ‘new town idea’, conceptually and organizationally. Second, cancellation was the consequence of short-term factors, changing strategic objectives and loca…
‘The core’
This article is the second part of a discussion of what we term the ‘centre-idea’. This idea, we argue, was fundamental to British modernist architecture and planning praxis from the mid-1940s onwards. It represented an active spatial environment in which people could develop their selves and their interests at a time of expanding democracy, which required new forms of community association. We locate this idea’s roots in the pre-war British volu…
‘The core’
This is the first of a pair of articles in which we argue that what we term the ‘centre-idea’ was fundamental to British modernist architecture and planning thought from the mid-1940s onwards. We locate this idea’s roots in the pre-1939 British voluntary sector, specifically the activities of the Peckham Experiment and the Pioneer Health Centre which housed it. We evidence its long-term influence on post-1945 architecture and planning in the invi…
The opportunity and desire to buy
This article explores the role of the post-war new towns in Scotland in providing people with the opportunity to own their own homes. Most importantly, it traces the development of this policy prior to the 'Right to Buy' of the early 1980s when tenants were offered substantial discounts by local authorities, housing associations and crucially, new town development corporations. The article challenges the dominance of rented tenure in existing acc…
‘Making architecture relevant’
Essex County Council’s Design Guide for Residential Areas, published in 1973, is best known as the progenitor of what became the standard style of 1980s English low-rise housing, featuring brick, tile, timber boarding, and ‘vernacular’ touches. Yet as much the image of the architecture encouraged by the Design Guide suggests a ‘retreat’ from modernism, to see the guide solely in those terms overlooks three key elements of the publication, which a…
Political and Economic history of UK and US (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · History (5 works) · Architecture (4 works) · History (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Architecture, Modernity, and Design (3 works) · Historical Architecture and Urbanism (3 works)