CONTEXT 188 : JUNE 2026 51 48 CONTEXT 186 : DECEMBER 2025 Book reviews Suburban nation England’s Suburbs 1820–2020 Joanna Smith and Matthew Whitfield, Liverpool University Press on behalf of Historic England, 2025, 308 pages, fully illustrated, hardback, ISBN 978 1 836244 35 6, £40 Most people in England live in suburbs. The authors of this book note that it has been argued that England could be viewed as ‘the suburban nation’. But what is a suburb? You do not often hear developers or housebuilders boasting that their new scheme is ‘suburban’, and the first definition I find when looking up ‘suburban’ online is ‘contemptibly dull and ordinary’. So it seems that most people have ended up living somewhere that is not the sort of place they like. What is going on? The answer is that creating suburbs is a common feature of urban change. Joanna Smith and Matthew Whitfield nail it with the three-part ‘broad definition’ that they use in this book. The features of a suburb are, they write, ‘a peripheral or satellite location at the time of creation; a degree of dependence on an urban centre; and a mainly, but not necessarily exclusively, residential character.’ Those three features are all subject to change. A development may have a peripheral or satellite location when it is built, but subsequent development may surround it. The suburb may have a degree of dependence on an urban centre at first, but in time it may develop facilities of its own that make it more independent. And although it may have a mainly residential character when it is built, later it may be swallowed by a town or city centre and undergo a significant change of character. The new suburban development may itself swallow what was there before. In the 19th century, Smith and Whitfield write, ‘rubbish heaps, made up of a medley of refuse, including household waste, street sweepings and dead animals, were to be found in the suburban outskirts and in the poorer urban districts; in London these sometimes attained great size and notoriety.’ Rising land values might lead to those eyesores being removed. Today, the outskirts of towns and cities may be home to ‘waste disposal sites, water reservoirs, industrial plant, power generation sites, pylons and transport infrastructure, including airports and motorway interchanges, supplemented by retail parks, leisure complexes, business parks and distribution depots.’ The advancing suburbs may incorporate those uses or replace them, depending on the economics of development. And suburbs may be seen as suitable for intensification, with a resulting increase in density and perhaps diversity of uses. So suburbs are often changing, not static, however superficially similar many of them may appear. To plan, manage and protect them effectively we need to understand how they developed and what role they play today. That is why in 2012 English Heritage, now Historic England, initiated a national research project on suburban development that would put it in context, and why Historic England has drawn on that research in publishing this book. England’s Suburbs 1820–2020, meticulously researched, well written and superbly illustrated, will be of enormous value to anyone dealing with historic and not-so-historic buildings in what are or once were suburbs, or to anyone fascinated by urban history. Rob Cowan, editor of Context Causes célèbres Campaigning for Edinburgh: the Cockburn Association 1875–2049 Cliff Hague and Richard Rodger, with DJ Johnston-Smith and Terry Levinthal, Birlinn and John Donald, 2025, 256pp, 131 colour illustrations and tables, ISBN 978 0 859767 28 6, £25 Campaigning for Edinburgh celebrates the Cockburn Association’s 150th anniversary judiciously by explaining, warning and advising us of the significant role that a civic voice plays in protecting the character and culture (and so the economy and social stability) of a place. To this end, the authors Unfinished business Architecture in Conversion and the Work of Carlo Scarpa Federica Goffi, Lund Humphries, 2025, 192 pages, 174 colour and black-andwhite illustrations, ISBN 978-1-848225569-5, hardback, £55 Carlo Scarpa, modernist Italian architect and designer, is highly regarded internationally for his architecture, artistry and glass design. Although he died in 1978, his powerful and innovative work, particularly the renovation of museums and art galleries, still has much influence. Federica Goffi, professor at the Azrieli school of architecture and urbanism, Carleton University, has spent much of her career exploring the relationship between architecture and time. This has led her to the conclusion that any building, old or new, is not the result of a single original design but changes over time, and that conservation should serve as an opportunity for innovation and imagination. Goffi calls this process ‘architecture in conversion’, which she describes as adaptive change, allowing for radical reinterpretations that contribute to the memory of the building, but also a broad sense of cultural orientation. In the book Golfi uses Scarpa as an exemplar of architecture in conversion and argues that his work on old buildings, which certainly differs from current conservation practices, provides a more creative and meaningful approach. The book has five chapters. The first is an introduction explaining Goffi’s concept; the three that follow feature aspects of Scarpa’s design approach, based on the principles of time, weather and tempo; and the final chapter considers work by other architects which may be considered to fit her definition of conversion. The book is beautifully designed, with superb photographs of Scarpa’s work, including many of his characterful drawings, which themselves help to explain his approach to design. Regrettably Goffi expounds her ideas using abstract terms typical of academic discourse, which often make her arguments obscure and unnecessarily verbose. In the chapter ‘Time Sensing’, Goffi analyses Scarpa’s conversion of the 16th century Tolentini Convent in Venice into the Iuav University of Venice. Alongside its entrance, Scarpa lays horizontally a stone door frame found elsewhere in the convent refectory, with an evocation of an enfilade of concrete portals inside it encouraging speculation on the past through the actions of the present. Scarpa refrained from replicating historical details, distinguishing interventions from earlier fabric. He was fascinated by weathering, often selecting materials in his new buildings, such as the extraordinary Brion Family Memorial, where irregular concrete finishes were obtained by using rough and medium-grade aggregates. At the Querini Stampalia, lagoon water enters the building at high tides and light is refracted by the water surface on to walls and ceilings, evoking the sense of weathering. Most remarkable is the Cangrande Statue at Castelvecchio Museum, Verona, which is placed on top of a concrete tower exposed to the weather and seen from multiple viewpoints, expressing the notion of time passing. In the fourth chapter, ‘Tempo The Brion Family Memorial by Carlo Scarpa (Photo: Wikimedia)
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