HOUSING

Affordable Housing

In 2021 it was reported the Mayor of London's Office was going to maximise tenure integration . This was because developers had taken to using technology and separate entrances and lifts to segregate the tenants of flats with affordable rents away from people who were buying or renting flats that were on the commercial market. The former would often be barred from some of the facilities that the latter had enjoyed. They would often occupy separate floors of a building.

Camden

The 1965 reorganisation of local government transferred responsibility for building housing from the London County Council to the boroughs.

Sydney Cook was Camden's housing's director. Among the architects whom he hired was Neave Brown (1929-2018).

Camden Mews has several houses that were designed by leading architects. Part of the planning authority's openness may have derived from the fact that it was a mews.

See Also: DEVELOPMENTS The Brunswick Centre

Neave Brown

Among the architects whom Sydney Cook hired was Neave Brown (1929-2018). Brown designed five houses in Winscombe Street (1966), 72 in Fleet Road (later Dunboyne Road) (1967), and 522 in Alexandra Road (1969). In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal.

Neave Brown and his family lived in one of the Winscombe Street houses.

Fleet Road challenged the contemporary orthodoxy that housing could only be addressed effectively through the construction of towerblocks.

Brown found that Camden's councillors were vociferous of what they thought were the shortcomings of his design. He wished to include a youth club. The idea was decried. Therefore, in his next iteration he included a service centre annexe . His reasoning was that none of the councillors would ask him about this for fear of seeming ignorant. It, therefore, went unchallenged. With time support for his initial idea of a youth club emerged and then became the new orthodoxy. He was asked to include one. I think I know where I can put it, was his reply.

Neave Brown's council housing was low-rise. The homes had well-lit rooms. People liked living in it. His work was high-density, Brutalism but also sympathetic and humane.

On his innovations was to install heating systems in party walls. This experienced teething difficulties during its first winter. A local newspaper ran the headline Ice Cold In Alex.

In 1993 the Alexandra Road Estate became the first post-war estate to be listed (at grade II*).

Alexandra Road was built at a time of high inflation. The local authority proved to be unable to handle the situation. As a result, the project took a decade to complete and finished over budget. An investigation was set up to ascertain who was to blame. It proved to be protracted. In the end Brown was exonerated completely and the blame was firmly ascribed to the local authority. However, the fact the architect had been the subject of an inquiry, that it had taken so long, and that its outcome was buried caused major damage to his professional. He was never awarded a major commission in Britain again. Instead, he worked as a gallery exhibition designer and undertook some university teaching. Eventually, he was invited to design housing projects again.

In 2018 the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded the initial Neave Brown Award for Housing. Brown and James Stirling had been squash partners and good friends. Brown was a small man, Stirling a vast one. They had both worked for the Lyons Israel Ellis practice. The award ceremony took place a few months after the Grenfell Towerblock fire.

Shortly before his death Brown was invited to participate in an event that was held in the Hackney Empire theatre. The 1300-strong sell-out audience gave him a ten-minute standing ovation.

Company Dormitories

The great department stores employed thousands of people. They were accommodated in dormitories above the premises or in hostels that were owned by the businesses.

Location: Bonham Carter House (Warwickshire House), 56-58 Gower Street, WC1E 6EE. The dormitory for Bourne & Hollingsworth staff. (orange, purple)

Company Estates

Railway Companies

The Midland Railway built a couple of hundred cottages for railway workers in Cricklewood (1896). The train drivers tended to have the larger properties. In 1998 the district was designated a conservation area.

Location: Midland Terrace, NW2 6QH

Landlords

Nicholas Hoogstraten

Nicholas Hoogstraten added the van to his surname.

He collected stamps and developed a collection that he us reputed to have sold for 30,000. This gave him the capital with which to become a property owner. He bought properties that had sitting tenants in Notting Hill and persuaded them to move. This enabled him to sell the properties for a handsome profit or to borrow against their increased value. In 1968 he was convicted of paying to mount a hand grenade attack on Rabbi Bernard Braunstein and given as four-year sentence. He was incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs Prison. The conviction was overturned. (In 2005, following a civil case, he was ordered to pay the victim's family 6m.) In 1970 the senior judge Lord Wynn described Hoogstraten as a sort of self-imagined devil who likes to think of himself as an emissary of Beelzebub.

Hoogstraten regarded himself as being an outsider. As a result, he chose to identify with London's Black communities.

In 1999 Muhammad Raja, a business associate of van Hoogstraten, was murdered. Van Hoogstraten was convicted of being connected to the crime and was given a ten-year prison sentence.

Location: Wormwood Scrubs, 160 Du Cane Road, W12 0AN

Peter Rachman

The slum landlord Peter Rachman's (1919-1962) activities were concentrated in a set of streets that lie to the south of Westbourne Grove. They included Colville Terrace, Powis Square, and Talbot Grove.

Ownership

Youth Ownership

Youth ownership of housing peaked in 1989.

Pre-Fabs

The Pre-Fab Museum

The Pre-Fab Museum had temporary physical existence on the Excalibur Estate, Catford.

Website: www.prefabmuseum.uk

Towerblocks

See Also: FIRE Grenfell

Ronan Point

Ronan Point was a 22-storey towerblock in Canning Town.

In 1968 one quarter of it collapsed following a gas explosion. Five people were killed in the Ronan Point collapse. Seventeen were injured. The subsequent inquiry was chaired by the barrister William Griffiths Q.C. (1923-2015).

For many architects the Ronan Tower collapse symbolised the failure of Modernism.

In the wake of the Ronan Point collapse London councils took to commissioning public housing that was low rise and high density. The Marquis Road and Packington estates in Islington were the first to be completed.

Trellick Tower

The design of Trellick Tower (1972) was informed by Italian Futurism.

Goldfinger moved into the top floor of Trellick Tower in order to demonstrate that it was possible for families to live in a high-rise tower. His wife complained bitterly at the experience. They moved out after a few weeks.

The flats of Trellick Tower have individual postcodes.

Goldfinger s Balfron Tower in the East End was the principal inspiration for J.G. Ballard s novel High-Rise (1975).

Location: 5 Golborne Road, W10 5NR (blue, red)

St Leonards Road, Poplar, E14 0QR. (Balfron Tower)

Website: https://balfrontower.co.uk

David Backhouse 2024