Manplan

RIBApix presents a series of features exploring the Architectural Review's radical assessment of the built environment at the end of the 1960s, MANPLAN.

Looking forward to the new decade ahead in the autumn of 1969 The Architectural Review (AR) paused to examine and evaluate state of the nation through its architecture and planning. This was by way of the publication of ‘Manplan’, a number of special editions of the AR focusing on topics ranging from housing to religion and how well these functioned within society. Manplan was not only a radical, sometimes brutal assessment of the built environment of the day, but today forms a poignant reminder of British life at the end of the sixties. Its stated intention was to take “as its yardstick real needs rather than minimum standards. Hence the title MANPLAN. A plan for human beings with a destiny rather than figures in a table of statistics.” (The Architectural Review, September 1969)

The first edition, Manplan 1, was published in September 1969 with the series ending a year later with Manplan 8. The intended Manplan 9 focusing on Leisure was never published, however the RIBA holds some of the photographer Patrick Ward’s contact sheets.