Abstract
In his 1957 article, ‘Shoes, Hair and Coffee’, Toni del Renzio identified London coffee bars as one of the places where, ‘a real and genuine popular modern architecture is being created, as outstanding and as anonymous as the gipsy baroque of the fairground used to be. It is in undeniable opposition to the timid, dull and understated pretentiousness that does duty for modern English architecture.' This paper will compare this description of a ‘genuine popular modern architecture’ with other articles about coffee bars in the design and architecture journals of the mid nineteen fifties4.
Citation
Partington, M. (2004) The London Coffee Bar 'Problem' of the 1950s - An Eclectic Design Challenge to the Universalism of Modernism., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/31
The London Coffee Bar 'Problem' of the 1950s - An Eclectic Design Challenge to the Universalism of Modernism.
In his 1957 article, ‘Shoes, Hair and Coffee’, Toni del Renzio identified London coffee bars as one of the places where, ‘a real and genuine popular modern architecture is being created, as outstanding and as anonymous as the gipsy baroque of the fairground used to be. It is in undeniable opposition to the timid, dull and understated pretentiousness that does duty for modern English architecture.' This paper will compare this description of a ‘genuine popular modern architecture’ with other articles about coffee bars in the design and architecture journals of the mid nineteen fifties4.