Authors of Urbanism: Johnny Rodger

Join Johnny Rodger – writer and Professor of Urban Literature at Glasgow School of Art – in a presentation and discussion of his recently published book The Housing Film, which examines how a century of realities and possibilities in domestic living have been profiled and foregrounded through studies and representations of Housing in the medium of Film.

Much research has been done, and much has been written, about a special relationship between Film and Architecture. There is an affinity not just between the forms and procedures of those two arts: their interest in and exploitation of light and space, but also a significant crossover in the makers of film and architecture. The Housing Film as discussed in this new research, however, is a substantially different phenomenon. It is, for example, not necessarily or always focussed fully on architecture, although that does always remain at least in the background. As such the research requires an initial definition of Housing. Film and Housing as phenomena are, indeed, of the same 19th century vintage. They are contemporaries born of the necessities and possibilities of the mass society of the industrial revolution. They both speak to us, in their histories of the formation, development and decline of that type of society.

About the author

Johnny Rodger is Professor of Urban Literature at Glasgow School of Art. His most recent publications include The Housing Film (Edin. UP, 2024), Glasgow Cool of Art: 13 books of fire at the Mackintosh Library (The Drouth, 2022), Key Essays: Mapping the Contemporary in Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2021) and The Hero Building: An Architecture of Scottish National Identity (Routledge, 2016).