Alan Powers

For the Arthur character also known as The Brain, see List of Arthur characters.

Alan Powers (born 1955) is a British teacher, researcher and writer specialising in architecture and design.

Powers trained as an art historian at University of Cambridge, gaining an undergraduate degree and a PhD.

As a writer Powers has been prolific, writing reviews, magazine articles, obituaries of artists and architects as well as books. He has concentrated on 20th century British architecture and architectural conservation. He has also written books on the design of book jackets, shopfronts, book collectors, and the artist Eric Ravilious as well as monographs on Serge Chermayeff, and the British firms of Tayler and Green and of Aldington, Graig and Collinge. He is joint editor of the journal Twentieth Century Architecture published by the Twentieth Century Society, and joint editor of the series of monographs, Twentieth Century Architects, published by RIBA and English Heritage with the Twentieth Century Society. In 2011-12, Powers was awarded a Mid Career Fellowship from the British Academy to study 'Figurative Architecture in the Time of Modernism', a study of non-modernist architecture in Britain.

He has curated several popular exhibitions, including Modern Britain 1929-39 Design Museum, 1999, Serge Chermayeff (Kettle's Yard), 2001, Eric Ravilious (Imperial War Museum), 2003 and Mind into Matter (De La Warr Pavilion), 2009. His exhibition 'Eros to the Ritz: 100 years of street architecture' is at the Royal Academy, London, from late September 2012 to January 2013.

Alan Powers was until recently Professor of Architecture and Cultural History at the University of Greenwich in London. He currently is teaching at the New York University London campus.

He is Chairman of Pollock's Toy Museum Trust in London, and formerly Chair of the Twentieth Century Society (till 2007-12), remaining involved in the Society's campaigns for education and conservation.

An expert on 20th-century architecture, Alan Powers was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2008.

Selected books

• Eric Ravilious: Imagined Realities, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2003. ISBN 978-0-85667-567-6.
• Twentieth Century Houses in Britain: From the Archives of "Country Life", Aurum Press, 2004. ISBN 978-1-84513-012-1.
• Modern: The Modern Movement in Britain, Merrell Publishers, 2005. ISBN 978-1-85894-255-1.
• Front Cover: Great Book Jacket and Cover Design, Mitchell Beazley, 2006. ISBN 978-1-84533-242-6.
• Britain: Modern Architectures in History, Reaktion Books, 2007. ISBN 978-1-86189-281-2.
• Art and Print: the Curwen Story, Tate, 2008. ISBN 978-1-85437-721-0
• Aldington, Craig and Collinge, RIBA Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-1-85946-302-4
• Robin Hood Gardens Re-Visions, Twentieth Century Society, 2010. ISBN 978-095566-871-5

External links

• Information from the Art Workers Guild
• Alan Powers at the archINFORM database.
• Works by or about Alan Powers in libraries (WorldCat catalog)