British Design brings together leading international scholars, designers and journalists to provide new perspectives on British design in the last sixty years, and how it at once looked back to the past with the continuation of traditions that spoke to Britain's design heritage, and looked forwards with the embrace of modernist and postmodernist style. The book responds to and develops new ways of understanding the recent history of design in Britain, with case studies on designed spaces and objects, including domestic interiors, retail spaces, schools and university buildings and transport. The contributors address significant moments and phenomena in the historical and social history of British design, from the rise and fall of the English Country House style and the Brutalist architectural boom of the 1960s to the modern shopping space, and consider the work of key contemporary designers ranging from Tommy Roberts to Thomas Heatherwick. British Design provides new criticism and analysis on how design, from the immediate post-war period to the present day, has developed and changed how we live and how we interact with the spaces in which we live.British Design is split into 13 chapters and is richly illustrated with 65 images, 16 of which are in full colour.

ForewordBritish Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age: A Retrospective View, Christopher Breward, Edinburgh College of Art, UK and Ghislaine Wood, Victoria & Albert Museum, UKThe Spaces and Places of British Modernity, Fiona Fisher and Penny Sparke, Kingston University, UK1. The Primavera Story, 1946-1967, Janine Barker, Northumbria University, UK and Cheryl Buckley, University of Brighton, UK2. Tommy Roberts: Kleptomania to Two Columbia Road, Paul Gorman, Visual Culture Writer, UK 3. John Fowler, Nancy Lancaster and the English Country House, Martin Wood, Designer and Writer, UK4. At Home with Modern Design, 1958-1965: A Case Study, Christine Lalumia, Design Historian, UK5. Conservative Flagship. Interior design for RMS Windsor Castle, 1960, Harriet McKay, Royal College of Art and Suffolk New College, UK6. Bernat Klein: Colouring the Interior, Fiona Anderson, National Museums Scotland, UK7. Ancient Spaces in Modern Dress: Basil Spence at the University of Sussex, Maurice Howard, University of Sussex, UK8. Architects Co-partnership: Private Practice for Public Service, Alan Powers, Writer and Curator, UK9. Something Fierce: Brutalist Historicism in the University of Essex Library, Jules Lubbock, University of Essex, UK10. Hidden Internationalisms: Tradition and Modernism in Post-war Primary School Design 1948-1972, Catherine Burke, University of Cambridge, UK11. Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances. Modernist Pop and Modernist Architecture: A Short History of a Misunderstanding, Owen Hatherley, Journalist, UK12. Edinburgh on the Couch, Richard J. Williams, University of Edinburgh, UK13. Heatherwick Studio: A New Bus for London, Abraham Thomas, Sir John Soane's Museum, UKBibliographyIndex