Throughout the twentieth century architectural models served as the miniature playgrounds in which the future of Britain-s built environment was imagined, and in drawing from the evidence provided by those models today, this book considers how architects, planners, and civil engineers thought about that future by presenting a history of yesterday-s dreams of tomorrow, told through architectural models.
Focused not on the making of architectural models but rather the optimistic and utopian visions they were made to communicate, this book examines the possible futures put forward by one hundred and twenty models made by Thorp, the oldest and most prolific firm of architectural modelmakers in Britain, in order to reveal a century of evolving ideas about how we might live, work, relax, and move. From depictions of unbuilt city masterplans to those of seemingly ordinary shopping centres and motorways, the models featured trace a progression of the architectural, social, political,
