London's Burning

The 1968 Ronan Point disaster in Canning Town wasn't just a structural failure, it became a symbol of Modernist overreach. A gas explosion caused the partial collapse of this prefabricated high-rise, exposing the fragility of industrialised construction methods. As Curl critiques, "Ronan Point... demonstrates just one spectacular failure of Modernist obsessions concerning prefabricated industrialised systems of construction." (Curl, 2018, p. 295) For many, this was more than an architectural disaster, it was a social and cultural catastrophe. Sean Egan writes, "Disasters like Ronan Point... only added to the impression of one of the biggest catastrophes in the history of social planning." (Egan, 2014, Garageland – More or Less). Image here is a Promotional Poster, 1977 by CBS Records