Odd now to think that when the DOE became, under the Heath government, one of the first super-ministries in 1970 as a result of a merger between the old ministries of housing & local government, of transport and of public building & works, ‘environment’ meant, specifically, the built environment.
Lady Dartmouth (as she then was), the daughter of Barbara Cartland & later step-mother to Princess Diana, chaired one of the UK preparatory groups which published a report titled How Do You Want To Live?
How things changed. By the end of the decade the environment with which politics & most people were concerned was green, & man’s activities therein suspicious, if not necessarily vile.
Pat Tindale began her career at a time when the problem of slums, combined with the forecast growth in population, made urgent the provision of decent housing for all.
But the decade of the Seventies was not an easy time to be an architect, when modernism & the modern came under attack from all sides. The public sector in particular was considered to have failed, above all in housing, & the idea that bad architecture was responsible for anti-social behaviour found favour in some quarters.
There was a mass failure of belief in the ability of the public sector to solve the problem of housing, & so we turned to the market with its new financial instruments to give the people choice in the brave new world of property owning democracy.
In any case we no longer needed to work towards providing homes for a population of 70 million in this country by the turn of the millennium – ironically perhaps, the liberation of women from unwanted or unplanned pregnancy was seen as having out paid to that. Pat Tindale began her work in an era when the choice - marriage & motherhood or career - was stark.
No Chief Architect was appointed to replace Pat Tindale when she retired in 1986.
Links
Why Pat Tindale is my hero of the week
Declaration of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
Hansards – Stockholm conference:
15 December 1971 22 December 1971 21 July 1972
How do you want to live?
The Human Environment: The British View
Related post
When Labour built 1 million homes
Why Pat Tindale is my hero of the week
Declaration of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
Hansards – Stockholm conference:
15 December 1971 22 December 1971 21 July 1972
How do you want to live?
The Human Environment: The British View
Related post
When Labour built 1 million homes
