Architecture’s Unsung Institutions
In September 2025, the University of York will open its new School of Architecture marking a revival of York’s legacy in architectural studies. This began with the (largely forgotten) Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies (IoAAS) in 1953, a postgraduate study and research centre incorporated into the new University in 1963. Before its dissolution in 1997, IoAAS was renowned as an international centre for mid-career professionals to acquaint with changing ideas and policies and an advocate for inclusivity in the built environment sectors.
With its rigour and progressivism, IoAAS became the founding home of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (1956-) and the journal Yorkshire Architect (1968-88). Together they disseminated the critical voice of the unsung North of England and pluralised the sector’s role in transforming society. A British equivalent of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York (1967-85, historicised in Förster’s Building Institution (2024)), IoAAS offered a precedent for the London School of Architecture’s new lifelong learning “Part 4” (2023-).
Critically engaging with IoAAS’ legacy, this session invites papers that offer historical inquiry into other specialised and unsung architectural institutions (e.g. decolonial educators like the Kwame Tech, Ghana – Le Roux, 2004 or the UK’s hitherto overlooked Building Research Station – 1921-97). What can revisionist institutional micro-histories reveal about the development of built environment disciplines; how have these institutions’ diverse modes of practice disrupted or complicated them and their historiographies; and what are the discipline-specific or general methodological challenges of writing institutional histories in architecture?
This session will conclude with a visit to a small exhibition (curated by the convenors) on the former IoAAS taking place on campus.
Session Convenors:
Kim Förster, Manchester School of Architecture, University of Manchester
Yanqi Huang, Independent
Joshua Mardell, School of Architecture, Royal College of Art
Introductory Presentation and Conversation: Peter Burman, architectural historian and Director of the Centre for Conservation Studies (1990-97) at the IoAAS.
Speakers:
Rebecca Crabtree, Royal College of Art
From Reading Rooms to the Drawing Board: The Urban Legacy of the 19th Century Mechanics’ Institutes in the West Riding of Yorkshire
1825 was the year of Bradford’s woolcombers’ strike – five months of bitter dispute between 20,000 woolcombers and their employers. In Bradford, and across the West Riding, the mechanisation of traditional hand processes had led to the rapid urban growth of previously rural towns. The accompanying loss of income and culture inspired a simmering social unrest of which the woolcombers’ strike was representative. In that same year, proposals were made for a Mechanics’ Institute for Bradford, a model to educate working people providing a syllabus of industry-supporting classes along with classes for moral and intellectual “improvement”. It was a model for the working people funded, and usually designed, by the industrial and upper classes. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the proposals went no further that year—it was not until 1832 that Bradford got its Mechanics’ Institute.
Academics, Mabel Tylecote, Martin Walker and Eve Hartley have well documented how this now largely forgotten institution played a role in the development of higher education, the provincial museum and the public library however this paper will consider the impact the Mechanics’ Institute had on urban development. Focusing on the West Riding of Yorkshire and the significant published guidance of the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics’ Institutes, the paper will look at how the ideas that were accessed through the Institutes in the form of lectures and library collections, subsequently found their way into the built environment through a network of architectural patrons and new conceptions of class.
Patrick Zamarian, University of Liverpool
Creating an ‘Indigenous’ Profession for British India: The Sir J. J. School and the Indian Institute of Architects
When in 1878 the British-controlled Government of Bombay incorporated an architectural class in the curriculum of the Sir J. J. School of Art, its object was to produce capable draftsmen for its Public Works Department (PWD). In 1913, this draftsmen’s course was transformed into a self-contained school of architecture, headed by British architects recruited and appointed by the India Office in London. Unlike the Government of Bombay, these architects saw the school as a means to create an ‘indigenous’ private profession on the British model.
The paper will show that the profession that emerged as a result of these efforts was – and remained – inherently weak and ineffective in challenging PWD engineers’ supremacy over building activities under British rule. I will argue that one key reason for this lay in its close and never questioned proximity to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). This applied to the Sir J. J. School, which followed the RIBA’s prescribed syllabus and up until the 1940s monopolised architectural education in India. It also applied to the Indian Institute of Architects (IIA), which emulated the RIBA and consisted almost exclusively of British (or British-trained) architects and Sir J. J. School graduates. The IIA’s failure to untie itself from the RIBA and extend its scope beyond Bombay left it marginalised when following India’s independence in 1947 the centre of gravity in architectural politics shifted to New Delhi.
Lisa Kinch, Lancaster University
Learning by Doing: Student Experience at the Property Services Agency
The Property Services Agency (PSA) was an autonomous Government Agency, which at its 1970s peak employed 10,000 professional staff. Its remit was to “provide, manage, maintain, and furnish the property used by the government” by acting as an intermediary between Government Departments and the construction industry, effectively retaining the Ministry of Public Building and Works’ (MOPBW) monopoly over Government construction. Despite the Agency’s remit and influence, little academic attention has yet been given to their work and legacy. This paper shines a light on their contributions to official building in the UK, by focusing on their Student Training Office (PSA STO).
The PSA STO was founded in 1968 as part of the MOPBW, initially accommodating between 15 and 20 students. Its internal organisation reflected that of a typical architecture practice, led by a group manager supported by team managers and main grade architects. Although projects were at first limited to sorting offices and telephone exchanges for the Post Office, commissions gradually included other clients and building types. The organisation and achievements of the PSA STO offer an alternative perspective of official architecture in the UK by providing an opportunity to examine a small, distinct part of the vast organisation. Although bureaucratic anonymity at the PSA was reduced following the 1974 Matthew Skillington Report, much information about the organisation remains obscured. However, the commitment and quality of work suggest that the students at the PSA STO took their experience seriously, inspiring and empowering some to pursue long-term careers in public service.
Tom Goodwin, University of Warwick
Paying for Grand Projects: The Millennium Commission as Patron
Bankrolled by the proceeds of the nascent National Lottery, the Millennium Commission was established in 1994 to fund a raft of architectural projects across Britain that would suitably mark the year 2000 and the advent of the third millennium. Between 1994 and 2006, it distributed £1.3 billion worth of funding to over 200 capital projects. In doing so, the commission granted money on a purely reactive basis, leaving local groups responsible for the inception, delivery, and ongoing operation of the projects it funded; some flourished whilst others floundered.
The Millennium Commission was central to the transformation of British architecture in the 1990s and early 2000s, as its patronage of new galleries, museums, visitors’ centres, and experiences reinforced the prevailing culture-led approach to regeneration and a preference for the architecturally iconic.
Rather than focusing on the buildings and spaces that resulted from the Millennium Commission’s largesse, this paper examines its institutional history. It establishes the political context within which the Millennium Commission was created, before turning to look at its structure, decision-making processes, and relationship to the groups it funded. The overarching aim of this paper is to emphasise the important, but under studied, role that grant funding bodies had in shaping architectural production and culture at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Responses:
Luca Csepely-Knorr, University of Liverpool
Juliana Yat Shun Kei, University of Liverpool
Short visit to exhibition (curated by convenors) on IoAAS