In 1945 the AA School returned from its wartime exile in rural Hertfordshire to Bedford Square, where, facilitated by the government’s Further Education and Training scheme, it soon grew to twice its pre-war size. The presence of a large number of mature, self-assertive and almost entirely male ex-service students had a considerable impact on the way the school operated. This talk will focus on the unprecedented activism these students unfolded at the AA, culminating – after years of confrontation with the school authorities – in a partial return of their voting rights in 1956.
Patrick Zamarian holds master degrees in architecture as well as the history and theory of architecture, both awarded by ETH Zurich. He is working on a PhD thesis on the AA in the postwar era at the University of Liverpool.