Join us as we hear Dr Luca Csepely-Knorr discuss her research into post-war designed landscapes, heritage conservation and landscape history.

In 1973, architect and landscape architect Derek Lovejoy, designer of the award-winning landscape of West Burton power station argued, that ‘the world was reaching a crisis point in its history’, because ‘civilisation is threatened not necessarily by thermo-nuclear holocaust but by its own impact on nature’. Being the largest spender outside Whitehall in the decades after the 2nd World War, the Central Electricity Generating Board – the commissioner of West Burton – had a profane impact on the English countryside and ultimately on climate change. While the negative effect of coal-fired electricity generation is well known, this presentation will question whether we can learn from the Board’s legacy if we approach it through the lens of landscape architectural history.