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History of Art

Ellie Brown

Thesis: The 'Golden Age' of Shopping Centres: Spaces of Consumption in 1970s Britain

Supervisors: Dr Otto Saumarez Smith and Dr Jonathan Vickery

Research funded by Midlands4Cities (AHRC)

Research:

This project looks at shopping centres constructed over the course of the 1970s, a period of prolific construction for large-scale, enclosed retail complexes in towns and cities across Britain. It seeks to contextualise these developments within an historical, urban and cultural fabric to understand how shopping centres are integrated into existing landscapes. Taking a cue from Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the nineteenth-century arcade as a catalyst for uncovering lost histories and past modernities, this project seeks to understand the role that shopping centres played within the built environment over time.

My research combines art historical literature on the design, visual culture and modes of representation with scholarship on the urban environment to situate the shopping centre within wider discussions about how space and place is navigated and understood. Using contemporaneous debates on topics such as heritage, "Englishness" vs Americanisation, consumerism and "taste", I seek to contribute to an emerging academic discourse on postwar commercial modernism. By focusing on the (re)production of spaces of consumption over time, I will investigate how attitudes to the design and use of the built (shopping) environment have changed, and are charging, at a moment when shopping centres face an increasingly uncertain future.

Research Interests:

  • Architecture of Consumption
  • Photography and Architecture
  • Material and Visual Culture
  • Public Art and C20 sculpture

Papers:

  • March 2024: John Lewis: Partnership in Shopping Centre Development, 1969-1982 (Online seminar series, CHORD University of Wolverhampton)
  • March 2023: "Halting the American syndrome": From American-style malls to covered British high streets (Urban History conference, University of Warwick)
  • Feb 2023: "Vandals are destroying this ancient city": Measuring the public response to Nottingham's two shopping centres, 1964-1972 (Contemporary History and Politics PGR Seminar series, University of Nottingham)
  • Dec 2022: "Vandals are destroying this ancient city": Measuring the public response to Nottingham's two shopping centres, 1964-1975 (SPUD XVIII Seminar series, London School of Architecture)
  • Sept 2022: Two Tales of One City: Differing Notions of the Shopping Centre in 1960s Nottingham (History of Art PGR Symposium, University of Warwick)

Public Engagement:

  • Feb 2024: From Arndale to Zara: Shopping Centres (Twentieth Century Society, Spring lecture series)
  • Oct 2022: Looking at centre:mk through the archive (Archive-opia, centre:mk) [recording online]Link opens in a new window

Articles:

Education:

  • MA: History of Art*, The Courtauld Institute of Art (2018-9)
  • BA: History of Art, University of Leeds (2013-6)

*'Experiencing Modernism: Utopia, Politics, and Times of Turmoil' with Dr Robin Schuldenfrei

Contact: ellen.brown[at]warwick.ac.uk