In response to the economic turbulence of the 1970s, British architects employed primarily by the welfare state became increasingly autonomous. In the postwar years, the profession shifted away from designing for an abstract public under state-imposed constraints toward advocating for impermanence, expendability, and flexibility. Drawing from the CCA Collection, Sonali Dhanpal shows how these ideas were applied in peripheral regions seemingly apart from capitalist needs. She examines how designing for flexibility emerged among broader, proto-neoliberal ideas about class, nation, and the family likewise held by social conservatives.

This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so registration is required. Admission to the museum is included with your registration.

Sonali Dhanpal is a Fellow at the Temple Hoyne Buell Centre for American Architecture and the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. Her research focuses on questions of land, property, and housing in late colonial South Asia and post-colonial Britain. Dhanpal holds a PhD in Architectural History and Theory from the SAPL, Newcastle University and was a 2023–2024 Princeton-Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities at Princeton University.