Winner of the 2016 Antoinette Forrester Downing Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians. In many cities across the world, particularly in Europe, old buildings form a prominent part of the built environment, and we often take it for granted that their contribution is intrinsically positive. How has that widely-shared belief come about, and is its continued general acceptance inevitable? Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated with care and reverence in many societies, including classical Rome and Greece. But only in modern Europe and America, in the last two centuries, has this care been elaborated and energised into a forceful, dynamic ideology: a 'Conservation Movement', infused with a sense of historical destiny and loss, that paradoxically shared many of the characteristics of Enlightenment modernity. The close inter-relationship between conservation and modern civilisation was most dramatically heightened in periods of war or social upheaval, beginning with the French Revolution, and rising to a tragic climax in the 20th-century age of totalitarian extremism; more recently the troubled relationship of 'heritage' and global commercialism has become dominant. Miles Glendinning's new book authoritatively presents, for the first time, the entire history of this architectural Conservation Movement, and traces its dramatic fluctuations in ideas and popularity, ending by questioning whether its recent international ascendancy can last indefinitely.

As the debate about Scottish independence rages on, this book takes a timely look at how Scotland's politics have been expressed in its buildings, exploring how the architecture of Scotland - in particular the constantly-changing ideal of the 'castle' - has been of great consequence to the ongoing narrative of Scottish national identity. Scotch Baronial provides a politically-framed examination of Scotland's kaleidoscopic 'castle architecture', tracing how it was used to serve successive political agendas both prior to and during the three 'unionist centuries' from the early 17th century to the 20th century. The book encompasses many of the country's most important historic buildings - from the palaces left behind by the 'lost' monarchy, to revivalist castles and the proud town halls of the Victorian age - examining their architectural styles and tracing their wildly fluctuating political and national connotations. It ends by bringing the story into the 21st century, exploring how contemporary 'neo-modernist' architecture in today's Scotland, as exemplified in the Holyrood parliament, relates to concepts of national identity in architecture over the previous centuries.

Winner of the 2016 Antoinette Forrester Downing Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians. In many cities across the world, particularly in Europe, old buildings form a prominent part of the built environment, and we often take it for granted that their contribution is intrinsically positive. How has that widely-shared belief come about, and is its continued general acceptance inevitable? Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated with care and reverence in many societies, including classical Rome and Greece. But only in modern Europe and America, in the last two centuries, has this care been elaborated and energised into a forceful, dynamic ideology: a 'Conservation Movement', infused with a sense of historical destiny and loss, that paradoxically shared many of the characteristics of Enlightenment modernity. The close inter-relationship between conservation and modern civilisation was most dramatically heightened in periods of war or social upheaval, beginning with the French Revolution, and rising to a tragic climax in the 20th-century age of totalitarian extremism; more recently the troubled relationship of 'heritage' and global commercialism has become dominant. Miles Glendinning's new book authoritatively presents, for the first time, the entire history of this architectural Conservation Movement, and traces its dramatic fluctuations in ideas and popularity, ending by questioning whether its recent international ascendancy can last indefinitely.

This book takes a timely look at how Scotland's national politics have been expressed in its buildings, exploring the role the architecture of Scotland - in particular its world-famous 'castle architecture' - has played the ongoing narrative of Scots national identity. Scotch Baronial examines many of the country's most important historic buildings - from the palaces left behind by the 'lost' monarchy, to revivalist castles and proud town halls - examining their architectural styles and tracing their wildly fluctuating political and national connotations. An introduction to a key episode in British architectural history, and a valuable resource for anyone studying the role of architecture in narratives of nationalism and empire globally, Scotch Baronial ends by bringing the story into the 21st century, exploring how contemporary 'neo-modernist' architecture in today's Scotland, as exemplified in the Holyrood parliament, relates to concepts of national identity in architecture over the previous centuries.

Shortlisted for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion 2021 (The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain) "It will become the standard work on the subject." Literary Review This major work provides the first comprehensive history of one of modernism’s most defining and controversial architectural legacies: the 20th-century drive to provide ‘homes for the people’. Vast programmes of mass housing – high-rise, low-rise, state-funded, and built in the modernist style – became a truly global phenomenon, leaving a legacy which has suffered waves of disillusionment in the West but which is now seeing a dramatic, 21st-century renaissance in the booming, crowded cities of East Asia. Providing a global approach to the history of Modernist mass-housing production, this authoritative study combines architectural history with the broader social, political, cultural aspects of mass housing – particularly the ‘mass’ politics of power and state-building throughout the 20th century. Exploring the relationship between built form, ideology, and political intervention, it shows how mass housing not only reflected the transnational ideals of the Modernist project, but also became a central legitimizing pillar of nation-states worldwide. In a compelling narrative which likens the spread of mass housing to a ‘Hundred Years War’ of successive campaigns and retreats, it traces the history around the globe from Europe via the USA, Soviet Union and a network of international outposts, to its ultimate, optimistic resurgence in China and the East – where it asks: Are we facing a new dawn for mass housing, or another ‘great housing failure’ in the making?