Prince Charles' A Vision of Britain as a Populist Retrotopia

In 1989, Charles, Prince of Wales (now King Charles III), published A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture, a book promoting traditional over modernist architecture. He called for an architecture which could please the more traditional taste of ‘ordinary’ people. Prince Charles’ opinions generated extensive positive feedback by the audience, and his ideas fuelled an architectural debate for several years, forcing many architects to re-evaluate and clarify their views on modernist architecture. In our chapter, we scrutinize three aspects intertwined in A Vision of Britain: firstly, the author’s attack on modernism in architecture; secondly, the populist arguments he uses to legitimize his attack; and thirdly, the retrotopic tendencies of his proposal for a reversion to the architecture of the past. In addition, we take a look at Poundbury, Prince Charles’ retrotopia realized on the outskirts of Dorchester, and consider if and how his nostalgic ideas have been successfully constructed.