Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Jill Rudd: Making modern childhood.

In Episode 31/2 of A is for Architecture, Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Jill Rudd discusses their recent book, Building Children’s Worlds: The Representation of Architecture and Modernity in Picturebooks, a collection of essays by various scholars, co-edited with Emma Hayward, and which was published by Routledge this year. Jill is Professor of English at the University of Liverpool and Torsten is Reader in Architecture at the Liverpool School of Architecture, University of Liverpool. (Emma is a secondary school English teacher and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool).

‘The kinds of architectural worlds [children] are exposed to in picturebooks during their formative years may be assumed to influence how they regard such architecture as adults.’ How, then, has children’s literature sought to socialise young readers to the nature, values and stories of the modern epoch? In Building Children’s Worlds ‘scholars address questions such as: Is modern architecture used to construct specific narratives of childhood? Is it taken to support ‘negative’ narratives of alienation on the one hand and ‘positive’ narratives of happiness on the other? Do images of modern architecture support ideas of ‘community’? Reinforce ‘family values’? If so, what kinds of architecture, community and family? […] This book reveals what stories are told about modern architecture and shows how those stories affect future attitudes towards and expectations of the built environment.’

Big questions demand clever answers, so have a listen to the imaginative duo and see what you think. Sharing is caring, so do that too.

Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.  

More on Jill and her work is on the University of Liverpool website here. Torsten is here and his LinkedIn is here. (Emma is on LinkedIn here.) You can get the book from Routledge here.

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

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