In this talk, Owen Hatherley, drawing on his book The Alienation Effect, will talk about some of the Central European architects and city planners who moved to Britain between 1933 and 1940 - and ask what it took for them to become materially successful here, rather than elsewhere. Why did people like Mendelsohn and Gropius emigrate to the US so quickly? Which architects managed to thrive here, and why were some, like Goldfinger and Lubetkin, able to carve out such a large presence? What happened to the Polish School of Architecture that was based in Liverpool during the war? And finally, we will look at some of the younger, British-trained architects who arrived as teenagers - to what extent did their work draw on their experiences?
Owen Hatherley writes regularly about aesthetics and politics for the Architectural Review, the London Review of Books, Sidecar and Tribune. He is the author of many books, most recently Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects (Repeater, 2024), and The Alienation Effect – How Central European Emigres Transformed the British Twentieth Century (Penguin, 2025). He is a commissioning editor at Jacobin, the presenter of the Inter-Citiespodcast for Open City, and the writer and presenter of The Story of Solent City for Radio 4.
