City Series is a new public lecture series in Leicester that delivers free events relating to a wide range of urban topics, such as architecture, history and geography. This is a collaboration between Leicester City Council, De Montfort University, University of Leicester, and Loughborough University, with speakers from those institutions and from the wider community.
The latest lecture will be delivered by Dr Elain Harwood, a senior architectural investigator with Historic England, formerly part of English Heritage. Between 1996 and 2004 she was primarily responsible for the latter’s post-war research and listing programme, which led to the books Space, Hope and Brutalism, and England’s Post-War Listed Buildings.
Elain Harwood’s talk will focus on the post-war expansion of Leicester, which produced new churches and schools of great interest. It will take in other ambitious but unrealised schemes, including the proposals for a civic centre by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. It will also look at the physical expansion of the University after gaining its independent charter in 1957, when a development plan was produced by Sir Leslie Martin followed by a series of buildings by Britain’s leading modern architects.
This event has been part-funded by the ‘Changing Leicester’ project. More details of the wider programme of events, which have been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Leicester City Council, can be found here: http://www.visitleicester.info/things-to-see-and-do/arts-museums/exhibitions/changingleicester/
Further details on forthcoming City Series events can be found on: https://leicesterurbanobservatory.wordpress.com/events/