Join C20 Society, Notting Hill Editions and a host of friends for a special evening celebrating the 70th anniversary of Ian Nairn’s seminal Outrage, and launching the newly republished edition.

I will be showing work from my 2015 project ‘Route Book’ and discussing plans for a follow-up photographic exploration of Southampton and Carlisle. Ian Nairn’s photography and its relevance to the present day will also be illustrated.

In 1955, Britain’s most prestigious architectural magazine, The Architectural Review, published a special issue featuring a single essay by Ian Nairn, a famously opinionated (and untrained) architectural critic. Based on observations made on a journey Nairn took across the UK in a Morris Minor, Outrage is a searing critique of urban sprawl, or ‘Subtopia’. In this manifesto, Nairn warns that ‘if what is called development is allowed to multiply at the present rate’, Britain’s natural – and urban – landscapes will lose their individuality and spirit. A call-to-arms against the ‘greying out’ of our towns and countryside before it’s too late, Outrage is widely considered to be Nairn’s masterpiece.

Other contributors include:

Travis Elborough - Author, historian, and social commentator, whose introduction heads this newly republished edition of Outrage

Gillian Darley - Writer, architectural historian, broadcaster, former C20 President, and author of Ian Nairn Words in Place

Otto Saumarez-Smith - Assistant Professor in Architectural History at the University of Warwick, C20 Society Trustee