This book presents an architectural overview of Dublin’s mass-housing building boom from the 1930s to the 1970s. During this period, Dublin Corporation built tens of thousands of two-storey houses, developing whole communities from virgin sites and green fields at the city’s edge, while tentatively building four-storey flat blocks in the city centre. Author Ellen Rowley examines how and why this endeavour occurred. Asking questions around architectural and urban obsolescence, she draws on national political and social histories, as well as looking at international architectural histories and the influence of post-war reconstruction programmes in Britain or the symbolisation of the modern dwelling within the formation of the modern nation. Critically, the book tackles this housing history as an architectural and design narrative. It explores the role of the architectural community in this frenzied provision of housing for the populace. Richly illustrated with architectural drawings and photographs from contemporary journals and the private archives of Dublin-based architectural practices, this book will appeal to academics and researchers interested in the conditions surrounding Dublin’s housing history.

First published in 1988. This book argues that there is a growing structural crisis in the provision of housing in advanced capitalist countries and that the steady improvement in housing conditions since 1945 is unlikely to continue. The dilemmas facing housing policy makers can no longer be seen as concerned just with distributional questions but with problems generated by the restructuring of key elements of housing provision, including private housing finance and the housebuilding industry. It looks at housing markets, housing policies and specific institutions connected with housing provision in many advanced capitalist countries, including Britain, the USA, France, West Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. It considers the different sectors and the changes taking place there, using case study material where appropriate to support its varied and convincing arguments.