MIDWEST STACK EXCH.
+ Exhibition (Architectural League of New York)
This project combines designing and writing to trace the material geographies, associations, and legacies of the architectural styles and infrastructure that comprised holiday camp impresario Billy Butlin’s brand from 1931 to his retirement in 1968. During his three decades’ reign, Butlin designed and built nine eponymous holiday camps in the UK, partially constructed another in the Bahamas, and operated several amusement parks, restaurants, and hotels in England that made leisure a subject of national import. His maxim and business model, “a week’s holiday for a week’s pay,” gave working people the chance to roleplay the lives of the rich and famous in the miniature world of the camp. At its zenith in 1963, the Butlin's portfolio comprised camps that entertained over one million visitors per season, with 65 per cent of those customers representing return business keen to experience his latest architectural innovations. While there is some literature around holiday camps’ contributions to nation-building, this research focuses on their architectural apparatus to examine the business of leisure, simulation of imperial bonds, and creation of citizenship in inter- and post-war reconstructions in Britain.
This project combines designing and writing to trace the material geographies, associations, and legacies of the architectural styles and infrastructure that comprised holiday camp impresario Billy Butlin’s brand from 1931 to his retirement in 1968. During his three decades’ reign, Butlin designed and built nine eponymous holiday camps in the UK, partially constructed another in the Bahamas, and operated several amusement parks, restaurants, and hotels in England that made leisure a subject of national import. His maxim and business model, “a week’s holiday for a week’s pay,” gave working people the chance to roleplay the lives of the rich and famous in the miniature world of the camp. At its zenith in 1963, the Butlin's portfolio comprised camps that entertained over one million visitors per season, with 65 per cent of those customers representing return business keen to experience his latest architectural innovations. While there is some literature around holiday camps’ contributions to nation-building, this research focuses on their architectural apparatus to examine the business of leisure, simulation of imperial bonds, and creation of citizenship in inter- and post-war reconstructions in Britain.
