RIBA Bookshops

Kenneth Powell

Kenneth Powell is an architectural critic, consultant and historian based in London. He has written extensively about contemporary architecture for newspapers and journals in Britain and abroad and is the author of many books, including monographs on Richard Rogers, Edward Cullinan, Will Alsop and Ahrends Burton Koralek as well as New London Architecture and New Architecture in Britain. Actively involved in the field of conservation over many years, he is a former Director of The Twentieth Century Society and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Jack Pringle, RIBA Past President and Partner at Pringle Brandon

‘This series of books is important because it records the work of important national, if not international, British architects of the twentieth century. They were the salt of the post-war modernist earth, working on housing, hospitals and industrial buildings. Their legacy has been a vein of quiet, very English modern architecture often unheralded but well loved by those who know of it. Now a new generation of students can trace their journey and admire their work’.

John Haworth, formerly Partner at Powell & Moya

Ken Powell has not produced a catalogue raisonné - rather a portrait of the personalities and individuals involved and their influence on the design process and output. He does not attempt a thorough architectural critique; there are no drawn plans and sections (perhaps there is still scope for such a book), but the List of Works provides a complete project listing and is a valuable resource.  It is interesting to understand the social and political background to Powell & Moya’s work. Working primarily on public sector projects, they created projects of real modernity but also of great humanity. Their style had a degree of honesty and simplicity which gives many of their projects a timeless quality.They were not great self publicists, so it is interesting to see how a practice with such a relatively small built portfolio had an effect on the architectural profession nationally. Their influence can be discerned in later works by many other practices. Although self-effacing in many ways, some of their work was ground breaking. Chichester Festival Theatre, for instance, was the first large thrust stage theatre in the UK – and built on a shoestring budget, while the British Pavilion for Expo 70 in Osaka was a very large scale wholly suspended structure, way ahead of its time.