Three recent books on the ideas of the late architect and anarchist Colin Ward suggest that his influence continues to grow, says Ken Worpole.
Autonomy: the Cover Designs of Anarchy, 1961-1970
ed. Daniel Poyner
Hyphen Press, 304pp, £25
Talking Green
Colin Ward
Five Leaves Publications, 160pp, £8
Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader
eds. Chris Wilbert and Damian White
AK Press, 368pp, £14
Though Colin Ward died in 2010, his writings and ideas seem more prominent and pertinent than ever. Over the past twelve months no less than three books directly concerning Ward’s work have appeared: ‘Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility – The Colin Ward Reader’; ‘Talking Green’; and ‘Autonomy – the cover designs of Anarchy 1961-1970’. It was that magazine, of which Ward was the long-standing editor, which contained many of his most provocative writings on housing policy, town planning, adventure playgrounds, environmental education, and the profession of the architect.
Today, in an era of the Occupy movement, environmental activism, localism and a deep distrust of mainstream political parties and programmes, it is not surprising that a new generation is interested in ideas which promote more independently-minded, do-it-yourself solutions to social and environmental concerns. The anarchism which Ward professed was based on the inherent tendencies towards cooperation and self-help which already existed in the social world – the ‘seeds beneath the snow’.
How do people make a home for themselves in the world, Ward asked again and again, and what forms of support might help or hinder this process? His wonderful essay on The Anarchist House supports the ‘long-life, loose-fit’ approach. He was fond of relating a study by psychologist Erik Erikson who found that if you gave a group of young children a box of bricks, the boys would build towers and the girls would create enclosed spaces which they then furnished. It was ever thus. For Ward, self-build was not about individualistic follies in the manner of Grand Designs – though he would have loved that television programme, fascinated as he was with materials, detailing and the construction process – but about experiments in living in which the built form was the expression of more communitarian ideas. Maintenance schedules and cleaning rotas were as important as design. To hear him expound on the history and place of the kitchen in the greater scheme of things was always a joy.
In a now famous essay on the influence of Ward’s editorship of Anarchy, historian Raphael Samuel claimed that the journal and its radical typography and design represented the true epicentre of 1960s counter-culture in Britain. Samuel observed that Ward ‘has taken Anarchy’s concerns with the built environment into the heart of architecture and planning’. Few people created more interest in the quality of the built environment in post-war Britain than Ward, whether through the pages of Anarchy or as a result of his job at the Town & Country Planning Association, where he established the Bulletin for Environmental Education. This galvanised a whole generation of primary and secondary school teachers to work with pupils on understanding the streets, buildings and towns where they lived. The fantasy that anarchism encouraged children to run wild was gainsaid by Ward’s profound commitment to an exploratory, educated appreciation of the built world, its management and social relationships, and its effect on local customs and ways of life. In a wonderful phrase he used to say that even very young children should not be confined to the playground, but should ‘climb out of the sandbox into the city.’
Ken Worpole is a writer on architecture, landscape and planning policy issues. His book Contemporary Library Architecture will be published by Routledge in April.
Images Anarchy, published in London in the 1960s, was designed mostly by Rufus Segar and edited by Colin Ward, who used it to propose the idea that anarchist principles of mutual aid and autonomous organisation outside a centralised state could be achieved here and now.
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