The Aladdin Houses
2007
The Austin Village lies seven miles south of Birmingham and was constructed in 1917 to house the increasing workforce at the Austin works at Longbridge. Requiring a quick economic solution to the housing needs of the workforce, and with skilled workers being in the armed forces, working on munitions factories or in them, Herbert Austin came up with the idea of buying a green field site near the north works and erecting prefabricated bungalow kits from across the Atlantic.
The images here document 16 of the Aladdin Houses, the name of the Californian company that constructed them. The work came from a commission to create a body of work that was exhibited alongside Bill Brandt’s 1930’s images of the Bourneville village, depicting a more understated and certainly less eminent example of philanthropic housing within Birmingham.
305mm x 305mm Photographs
