Professor Louise Campbell
Professor Louise Campbell is a specialist in late nineteenth and twentieth-century architecture. She teaches the history of art and architecture at the University of Warwick. Her research interests cover modern British architecture, public art in the post-war period, and the studio environment in the later 19th and 20th centuries.
She is currently completing a study of artists’ habitats in the twentieth century, for which she was awarded a Paul Mellon Centre Senior Fellowship for 2011-12. Her interest in the work of Sir Basil Spence began in 1987 with the organisation of an exhibition to mark the 25th anniversary of the consecration of Coventry Cathedral, To Build a Cathedral (Mead Gallery, University of Warwick). That exhibition featured drawings lent by the Sir Basil Spence Partnership, and designs and maquettes for works of art in the Cathedral lent by many of the artists involved. It was followed in 1996 by her monograph Coventry Cathedral: art and architecture in Post-war Britain (Clarendon Studies in the History of Art, Oxford University Press, 1996).
She won a research grant from the AHRC in 2004 for a four-year project ‘The life and work of Sir Basil Spence 1906-76: architecture, tradition and modernity’, to be carried out in collaboration with Miles Glendinning of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies and Jane Thomas of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.
Professor Campbell has published extensively on twentieth-century architecture. Among her other publications are:
Twentieth-century architecture and its histories (ed.) a millennial volume of essays published by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB, 2000).
“Paper Dream City/Modern Monument: Donald Gibson and Coventry”, in The Man-Made Future: Planning, Education and Design in the mid-Twentieth Century ed. Iain Boyd Whyte (Routledge), 2006
“The Phoenix and the city: war, peace and architecture”, in Phoenix: Architecture/Art/Regeneration ed. Richard MacCormac and Vivien Lovell (London, Black Dog Publishing, 2004).
"Perret and his artist-clients: Architecture in the age of gold", Architectural History, vol. 45 (2002).
" ‘A curious heritage’: Humanism, Modernism and Rome Scholars in Architecture in the 1920s and 1930s", in Lutyens Abroad: the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens outside the British Isles, ed. Andrew Hopkins and Gavin Stamp (London, British School at Rome, 2002).
"Patrons of the Modern House" in The Modem House Revisited: special issue of Twentieth Century Architecture, vol. 2 (1996).
"The young Basil Spence", Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. 100, no.4 (Apri1 1993).
“Towards a new cathedral: the Coventry Cathedral competition, 1950-51”, Architectural History, vol.35 (1992).
“A call to order: the Rome prize and early twentieth-century British architecture”, Architectural History, vol.32 (1989).
Professor Campbell has served on the executive committee of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and of English Heritage’s Post-war Buildings Steering Group. She is a member of the Fabric Advisory Committee of Coventry Cathedral.
Contact Details
Email - L.E.M.Campbell@warwick.ac.uk
