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PUBLIC HOUSE PRIVATE HOUSE Contemporary discourse conceives of a housing crisis in number of units and rarely in relation to its failing social infrastructure. The pub is no longer seen as a vehicle for housing development and its evolution as a typology is inhibited by nostalgia. Some architects even claim, ‘that no good pubs have been built in the last fifty years*.’ 3 The aim of this research is to understand the development of pubs and housing as one and the same, through investigating their close relationship over the last century, with a specific focus on the impact of state management.
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It will demonstrate the social potential that pub reformation can offer, despite the industry’s dependence on commerce, and imagine what pub reformation today could look like. In order to understand the sociocultural history of pub development, I will frame this essay through the two main actors who finance and build pubs in Britain - the State and the Speculative Developer. I will seek to recognise who has the agency to build social spaces and how this impacts their design. Pubs are privately owned and fundamentally linked to the economy yet are still considered as a vital public asset in terms of social space. As Antonia
