Outrage

by Ian Nairn

Acclaimed architectural critic Ian Nairn's masterpiece, reissued for the first time since 1955.

In June of 1955, The Architectural Review (Britain's most acclaimed and well-read magazine of architectural criticism) published a special issue featuring one essay called Outrage by Ian Nairn. As one of Britain’s most famously opinionated (and untrained) architectural critics, it came as no surprise that the issue opened with a prophecy of “that if what is called development is allowed to multiply at the present rate,” then all can be expected is the subsequent loss of the individuality and spirit of Britain’s natural, and urban, landscapes.

Nairn coined this phenomenon “Subtopia” and demonstrated it, throughout the issue, with mugshots of offending lampposts, arterial roads, and garrotted trees. For the first time in North America and the first time in decades in the UK, Nairn’s influential essay is newly available, now in a handsome volume complete with the original images.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Cities

92 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Ian Douglas Nairn was a British architectural critic and topographer.

Reviews

[Paul Norris]

Good book, still relevant today though expressed in dated terms (e.g. 'can your wife pop down to the shops or is it a fag without a car?'). Despite a few moments like these Nairn's style is brilliant, though I found it hard to share his annoyance at electricity pylons and fussy municipal gardens. Subtopia has won, and the measure of this is how few of the photographs he printed seemed really outrageous to me. To be outraged at all subtopian design now would put you in a permanent state of stress. It would be a danger to my health; it didn't do Ian Nairn's wellbeing much good even many decades ago, and that was before most mega-supermarkets and shopping centres and multiplexes.

[William Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important, pre-Jane Jacobs polemic against mindless design. Important, prickly, with nuggets that still apply today, if anyone’s listening. Somewhat dated on the other hand, focused on a specific time and country that one has to extrapolate for. The inverted road trip section isn’t the most compelling read, but the rest is a clarion call. The photographs certainly conjure a gray, wire and access road cluttered landscape—yikes.