Publication, accompanying exhibition and family activity pack for ‘Details’ New Town.

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‘Details’ is a publication edited by Wayne Head, interrogating architectural details in a variety of locations across the UK and further afield. What makes a detail ‘good’ or ‘bad’? What might a detail say about a building, an architect, a place, or a movement in history? If a building can manifest how we think, how does a detail speak about the whole? Can you have good details and a bad building? Or a good building made out of bad details? These and other questions are explored in the publication.

This latest edition of ‘Details’ compares and contrasts the first post-war new town of Stevenage with the final, largest and most ambitious new town of Milton Keynes, created 20 years later. The New Towns Act was passed in 1946. The plan was to move people from over-crowded and bomb-damaged cities to self-contained communities inspired by the garden city model. In the end, Britain created 32 new towns, which are home to nearly three million people today.

“The great delight is that, after years of being branded for their uniformity and mundanity, the new towns are now recognised for the quality of their architecture and its details.” Elain Harwood, Historic England

Our design anchors the booklets geographically with map silhouettes and by choosing a different monotone for each. Stevenage sites span a spectrum of blues and Milton Keynes a range of greens while one connecting booklet (introducing overarching essays) blends these hues and visual cues.

Edited by Wayne Head
Drawings by Curl La Tourelle Head; Gabriella Watkins and Eleanor Hill
Printed by Aldgate Press
Published by Everyday Press