Join writers, landscape designers, and architects for an evening of discussion around the life, work and influences of the anarchist writer, Colin Ward. Chaired by Ken Worpole, speakers will explore the influence Colin Ward’s advocacy of a ‘bottom-up’ transformation of society, and the environment it inhabits, has had on their practice. The evening will include a screening of an extract of Mike Dibb's 2009 film “Personally Speaking: Colin Ward in Conversation with Roger Deakin”.
In partnership with The Garden Museum.
Ken Worpole was a long-standing friend and admirer of Colin Ward. In 1999 he edited Richer Futures: fashioning a new politics, (Earthscan), a festschrift of essays in honour of Ward’s libertarian approach to education, housing and environmental studies.
David Knight (DK-CM) will update two of Ward's key texts, 'Arcadia for All' and 'The Do It Yourself New Town' by revisiting the sites of Bungalow Town and the Laindon plotlands in order to explore the tensions in Ward's theory between housing freedom and state intervention. He will present archive photographs of these unique environments.
Daisy Froud (Central St Martins’ Spatial Practices Programme) will address Ward’s advocacy of anarchism as a political system, and its potential implications for the way in which the built environment is shaped. She will also consider his discussion of public education.
Eric Guibert (Sens) will discuss the work of a number of architects and landscape designers who have loosened control in order to give back a productive role to the inhabitants, whether humans or plants.
Thursday October 8th, 18:30 - 20:00
The Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London, SE1 7LB
Tickets
Standard £15
AF members/Garden Museum Friends £10
Student £8