a new community.40 Although the South Bank exuded the ‘Festival Style’, it was the Exhibition of Architecture at Lansbury, East London, that truly displayed this notion of shaping a society. Lansbury showed a new model community with mixed houses and flats (see figure 3.23), named after the former Labour Leader and local MP. Standing out from the new Lansbury harmony was ‘Gremlin Grange’, a how-not-todo-it house, with crooked mock-Tudor frontage and unscientific demeanour.41 The Festival has been subject to a variety of readings, but the broader message was of movement into a new world under the guidance of those whom Owen Gavin and Andy Lowe term ‘heroes of the social democratic age’.42 A new generation of planners, designers and architects, who were figures of rationality that could lift public authority design above sectional interest.43
After the ball is over - From desolate decay to the cultural lifeblood of London The Festival’s first intention according to Harold Nicolson a politician at the time, was ‘to dissipate the gloom that hung like a pea-soup above the head
Figure 3.24 Lansbury, Poplar advertising ‘See London’s new neighbourhood growing
of the generation of 1951’.44 It would seem that from the accounts of people that danced to the music, and embraced the arts and culture of the Festival, its colour and light certainly brought that vision to fruition. Along with the regional and nationwide travelling exhibitions it brought ‘the people’ a carnival like celebration, able to leave those post-war years behind. After the exposition ended however, within a few months and with Winston 40. Barry Curtis . ‘One Continuous Interwoven Story (The Festival of Britain)’. Block no. 11, 1985. pp .49 41. Anon, A Survey of Lansbury’s ‘Live’ Architecture, Architects’ Journal vol. 104 no. 598 September 6 1951. pp. 277 42. Gavin & Lowe, ‘Designing desire, Planning, Power - The Festival of Britain’. Block no. 11, 1985. pp. 65 43. ibid.,.pp. 65 44. Becky Conekin, The Autobiography of a Nation - The 1951 Festival of Britain, (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2003) pp. 117
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