This viewpoint will reveal how Senate House, notable for the “strangely semi-traditional, undecided modernism” that puzzled Pevsner, provided inspiration for George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In this viewpoint, Bevin Court – originally to be called Lenin Court – offers a lens for understanding how architectural modernism went from a movement associated with communist architects from abroad to a symbol of the British welfare state.

This viewpoint will explain how the structure’s inclusion in an ugly buildings competition brought to a head a larger “crisis of the English avant-garde,” to the lament of one prominent architectural critic.

The concept of feminist marxist architectural history is explored through Jane Rendell’s writing on Burlington Arcade.