The Age of Ecology in the UK

The Age of Ecology was short-lived; it began with the post-war boom and ended with the adoption of the environmentalism into the mainstream in the mid-1970s. In the process of developing a new approach to the discipline, post-war architectural thinkers explored a range of ideas including ecological and systems theory. Erwin Anton Gutkind’s adoption of ecology appears to be driven by an aspiration to create new institutional frameworks that could prevent the reoccurrence of war rather than more conventional environmental concerns about resource depletion or over-population. The relationship between planning, instrumental thought and the complexity of social life underpins the discussion on post-war reconstruction. It appears that the ecological imagination in the 1950s and 1960s played some role in the development of thinking about the city and the relationship between planning, authority and the people. This discourse was cut short and placed in the back burner because it was understood as being in opposition to questions of social justice.