Architecture, Urban Planning and Community – „Byker” by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
Karolina Kosińska
karolina.kosinska@ispan.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1096-878X
Abstract
The article focuses on the project Byker (1983) by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a member of the Amber Collective from Newcastle, documenting social life of the working-class communities in Northern England. On the one hand, the film is a record of the transformation of Byker (the city’s authorities decided to demolish the terraced houses, declaring them as slums, and to replace them with a modern development – blocks of flats designed by Ralph Erskine). On the other, it may be treated as a voice in the lively discussion concerning postwar British architecture and urban planning. Kosińska argues that Byker, although quite nostalgic in tone, is above all – because of its hybrid form and also its complex rhetorical devices – trying to symbolically reverse the process of annihilation, to (re)construct the community, and to give the control over the living space back to this community. Kosińska refers to the arguments of Annabell Honess Roe and to the theory of the space as a social product formulated by Henri Lefebvre. She also places the film in the context of urban planning, using the account written by Peter Malpass that destroys the myth of success that accompanied the redevelopment of Byker.
Supporting Agencies
Keywords:
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Amber collective, British cinema, social realism, architecture, urban planning, communityReferences
Beynon, H. (2001). Images of Labour/Images of Class. W: S. Rowbotham, H. Beynon (red.), Looking at Class: Film, Television and the Working Class in Britain (ss. 25-40). London – New York: Rivers Oram Press.
Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (1993). From Space to Place and Back Again: Reflections on the Condition of Postmodernity. W: J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson, L. Tickner (red.), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (ss. 3-29). London: Routledge.
Google Scholar
Honess Roe, A. (2007). Spatial Contestation and Loss of Place in Amber’s „Byker”. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 4 (2), ss. 307-321.
Google Scholar
Konttinen, S.-L. (1988). Byker. Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books – Amber Side.
Google Scholar
Kynaston, D. (2007). Austerity Britain. London: Bloomsbury.
Google Scholar
Lambert, G. (1956). Free Cinema. Sight & Sound, 25, s. 174.
Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space (tłum. D. Nicholson-Smith). Oxford: Blackwell.
Google Scholar
Malpass, P. (1979, 16 maja). A Reappraisal of Byker. Part 2: Magic, Myth and the Architect, Architects’ Journal, ss. 1011-1020.
Google Scholar
Malpass, P. (1979, 9 maja). A Reappraisal of Byker. Part 1: Magic, Myth and the Architect. Architects’ Journal, ss. 961-969.
Google Scholar
Vall, N. (2012). Social Engineering and Particpation in Anglo-Swedish Housing 1945-1976: Ralph Erskine’s Vernacular Plan. Planning Perspectives, 28 (2), ss. 223-245. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2013.737710
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2013.737710
Google Scholar
Authors
Karolina Kosińskakarolina.kosinska@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1096-878X
Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Film and Audiovisual Arts at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ISPAN). She is the editor-in-chief of the academic film journal Kwartalnik Filmowy, published by ISPAN. Her book based on her doctoral thesis, Androgyn. Tożsamość, tęsknota, pragnienie [Androgyne. Identity, Longing and Desire] (2015), has been awarded the Bolesław Michałek Award as the best film studies publication of 2014-2015. Kosińska is interested in British cinema, especially in the history and aesthetics of British social realism.
Statistics
Abstract views: 305PDF downloads: 202
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Karolina Kosińska
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.
In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Karolina Kosińska, Loosening the Screws, or Emak Bakia , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 100 (2017): On Celebrating
- Karolina Kosińska, The British About the Poles, or Polish Cinema in British Reviews From „Sight & Sound” of the 1950s and 1960s , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 95 (2016): Transnational Dimension of Polish Cinema
- Karolina Kosińska, Radicality of Slowness , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 92 (2015): Polish Cinema and Politics
- Karolina Kosińska, “That Long Shot of Our Town From That Hill”, or About the Authority of the Look in British Social Realism Films of the 1960s and 1980s , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 97-98 (2017): Wandering Motifs
- Karolina Kosińska, Taste of Honey: Shelagh Delaney, Morrissey and the Impossible Feedback , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 91 (2015): Film Between Pop Music and Pop Culture
- Karolina Kosińska, Editorial , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 125 (2024): Cinema as a Memory Machine
- Karolina Kosińska, Men’s World for Men , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 85 (2014): Film and Media – the Past and the Future
