Tower block

Once they were seen as one of the greatest triumphs of the postwar Welfare State and of the social functionalism of Modern architecture. More recently, high flats and other dense Modern housing patterns have become the target of widespread, violent condemnation. The authors of Tower Block have decisively broken from this polarised rhetoric, believing that it has itself fuelled the 'high-rise problem'. Instead, they have undertaken a cautious but comprehensive historical analysis of the buildings in the hope that this may help foster a generally more balanced attitude towards them. Two…