A Burst of Architectural Plots: The Diverging Lives of Whipsnade Zoo Estate Bungalows (1933–2020)

Abstract

Abstract In 1933, the construction of two twin bungalows, designed by Berthold Lubetkin, began on a site adjacent to Whipsnade Zoo. From their inception, they have been differently appreciated by architects and historians for their formal, technical, functional, material and environmental conditions. This article reappraises these buildings from broader multiple contexts involving human and non-human actors that have been part of their ecology, prioritizing categories of human wellbeing, pleasure and entertainment, and animal and environmental welfare. Moving through the page and the terrain as spaces for critical analysis of the built environment, I consider the multiple plots – either a piece of ground, a site, a plan or the scheme of a written work – that constitute various valid frames for understanding Whipsnade bungalows. For this purpose, I reconstruct a methodological approximation to architectural criticism from feminist and cybernetic literature on “patterns” – conceived as flows of interconnection enabling associations and analogies.