Listen
Encounter
Architecture and Design series presented by John Escolme

Here we go. Here I am, sounding posher and my voice 12% deeper, apparently, talking about my new flat in Mansfield Road, amongst other things. Please fast forward the bit where I stutter awkwardly when asked about the Right to Buy. 

Events
London PoMo Walk
Saturday 7 May 2016
Tickets £13/£10

A new appreciation for Postmodern architecture has been brewing for a little while now. Some of the best examples of the style can be found in the City of London— with many of them now under threat. Join the Twentieth Century Society for an exploratory walk. Highlights will include Piers Gough’s work in the docks, Terry Farrells’ 69 Fenchurch Street — recently turned down for listing, RHWL’s Beaufort House and One America Square (pictured).

More information on the Twentieth Century Society website.

For rent
2 bedroom flat
Economist Plaza
St James
London SW1
£5417 per calendar month

I’m listing this for novelty purporses only. £1250 per week? Amazing. And look at the interior! Anyway, this is a two bedroom flat in the  Economist Plaza designed in 1960-64 by Alison and Peter Smithson for the Economist magazine. The development consists of three components  — an office block, bank, residential block and linking podium. rouped around an intimate raised pedestrian plaza: a four storey irregular polygon block on St James’ Street, a main tower of 15-storeys and at the rear of this an eight storey residential block. Each block is faced in roach Portland stone with a high fossil content and is chamfered to soften its relationship to the others. Described as ‘a remarkable fusion of Brutalist starkness and rigour with a contextualist awareness of history and place’ by Historic England, the buildings are listed Grade II*.

View the listing here.

For sale
1 Bedroom flat
Stanley Cohen House
Golden Lane Estate
London EC1
Offers over £550,000

Situated on the top floor of Stanley Cohen House, which runs long Golden Lane, is this one bedroom flat in Chamberlin Powell and Bon’s Golden Lane Estate. The flat has a double aspect living room, a separate kitchen and a double bedroom. There is also a large private balcony which overlooks the estate. Shame there’s no direct access to it from the bedroom. It would all benefit from a bit of updating. Anyway here it is.

Images courtesy of Frank Harris
Exterior image via www.daveanderson.me.uk

For sale
2 Bedroom duplex
Highgate Spinney
Crescent Road
London N8
£825,000

I really like these! Built between 1964 and 1966 and designed by architects John Howard and Bruce Rotherham, Highgate Spinney consists of 30 apartments in a secluded position surrounded by trees with communal gardens. 

The flat in entered on the first floor, and you go up to the second floor where there’s the living room and open plan kitchen diner, which leads onto a private terrace. On the third floor are the two bedrooms (the master bedroom with another private terrace) and the bathroom.

View the listing here.

For rent
1 Bedroom flat 
Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate
London NW8
£345 per week

I think I’ve featured this flat before. Well it’s back. A decent looking one bed flat in Neave Brown’s Grade II* listed estate. One thing I hadn’t noticed about these before, you have to go through the kitchen to get to the bathroom. I’m not so sure about that, maybe that’s just me. Anyway, have a look at the listing here. 

For sale
1 Bedroom flat
Elsfield 
Highgate Road
London NW5
£395,000

If I was still looking for a flat, I would probably go for this one. It was designed by Bill Forrest under Sydney Cook for Camden in 1972, so you can expect some familiar ‘Camden Style’ traits — including the full height glazing in the living room, leading onto a terrace. It’s described by Pevsner as ‘trim and cheerful (unlike so much borough housing of this time) not too large. Smooth rendered walls and nautical-looking railings in the Modern Movement revival’ 

If the photos are anything to go by it looks in fairly good condition internally, including some original features. The downside is that it is kinda on a busy road, but hey it’s also very close to Pizza East Kentish Town which wins it for me.

View the listing here. 

Watch
The Art Show: I Heart Carbuncles
(World of Wonder/ Channel 4, 2004)

Here’s Tom Dyckhoff (a whopping 12 years ago) guiding us through all that is brilliant about concrete and Brutalism and why it should be celebrated. Includes some great footage of the now demolished Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth and a rare look inside Brian Housdon’s extraordinary house in Hampstead. 

For sale
1 Bedroom Flat
Palace Road Estate
London SW2
£250,000

Are there any flats for sale in London for under £250,000? I’m going to spend the next half hour picking out the ‘best’. First up is this one bedroom flat in Tulse Hill in Palace Road Estate built by the Greater London Council 1973–1977 comprising of 352 dwellings. Pevsner describes it  as ‘An interesting plan but poorly finished and maintained.… it starts wt the west end with an appealing cluster of slate-hung hexagons (shop and Adult Education Centre). Then along Palace Road a series of irregular Y-shaped blocks with zigzagging facades to the road. Lower terraces along Christchurch Road, and between them a broad informal stretch of greenery. Curving paths and oddly angled vistas everywhere, to an extent that becomes mannered in the paved forecourts of the terraces. 

View the listing here, but note it’s cash only.

Watch
Owen Luder — in His Own Words

Whilst trawling Zoopla for properties under £250,000, I came across a flat in Milford Towers in Catford, designed as the ‘Barbican of the South’ by Owen Luder. I then realised the complex is about to be demolished, of course it is, so probably best not to buy it. 

Luder was behind a number of notable buildings, but most of them have been demolished, such as Portsmouth’s Tricorn Centre and Trinity Square in Gateshead. The Trinity Square  shopping centre and multi-storey car park was particularly noted for its Brutalist car park, designed by Rodney Gordon when he worked for the Owen Luder Partnership. The concrete structure, which dominated the skyline of the town, opened in 1967, and had a prominent role in the 1971 film Get Carter. It was demolished in 2010. 

Listen
Encounter 

John Escolme visits residents Richard Reynolds and Jane Lipsey at Perronet House in Elephant & Castle.

What’s on
Man About the House
Top of the BT Tower
Maple Street, London W1
18 June 2016
7pm
Tickets £32.50 

Fancy having a laugh at the top of the BT Tower? Then join Australian comedian Tim Ross (Rosso) for his award winning show ‘Man About the House’. The show mixes storytelling, stand-up comedy, design, history and music wiith the help of musician Kit Warhurst. The duo have performed to thousands of people in iconic mid-century houses and buildings in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, but this will be their first UK appearance. Alongside the BT Tower, and as part of the London Architecture Festival, they will also be performing at 2 Willow Road (sold out), Australia House and White Lodge by Studio Octopi.

Get more information and tickets here.

For rent
3 Bedroom Duplex
Dawson’s Heights
London SE22
£405 per week

A recently renovated three-bedroom flat in Dawson’s Heights — designed by the precocious Kate Macintosh when she was only 26, in the late 1960s. 

These flats are really interesting in plan as they interlock — known as scissor plan. This particular flat is entered on the second floor, where you will find a large reception room. Downstairs on the first floor there are three bedrooms, the kitchen, the bathroom, a separate loo, plus not one, but two balconies. 

There’s an interview with Kate Macintosh in the excellent ‘Utopia London’ film, with a short clip here where she talks about sneaky ways of getting ‘luxury’ balconies into the plans. You should also read Douglas Murphy’s blog post on Dawson’s Heights.

View the listing here. 

Watch
National Trust/Southbank Centre, Brutalism panel 

I didn’t make it to this last year, so I was please to find it had been filmed.
Kate Macintosh, David Luckhurst and John Grindrod discuss Brutalism with Utopia London filmmaker Tom Cordell. 

What’s on
Exhibition
Blueprint for Living
31 May – 4 June 2016
10 – 6pm daily
Fitzhugh Estate, Fitzhugh Grove  
London SW18 3SA

Curated by photographic artist Sharon O’Neill, ‘Blueprint for Living‘ centres on the Fitzhugh Estate in Wandsworth built by the LCC in 1956 — comprising five eleven-storey blocks arranged in greenfield setting. The exhibition explores ideas of home, community, design for the living space, architecture, public spaces, post-war British modernism and social housing. On display will be recently discovered RIBA images of the estate from 1956, O’Neill’s contemporary photographs and a film installation ‘Lift’ by award winning film maker Marc Isaacs.  .

More information here. 

Watch

Let’s get this weekend properly started!

Here’s 1960s band Unit 4 + 2 singing their hit ‘Concrete and Clay’ on the site of the Barbican. You can see Great Arthur House of Golden Lane Estate in the background.

For sale
Studio Flat
Isokon
Lawn Road
London NW3
£425,000

Designed by Wells Coates in the 1930s and commissioned by Jack and Molly Pritchard, the Isokon flats (now Grade I listed)  were intended for young professionals with ‘little time for house keeping’. Each flat was to have a large living room, a small kitchenette, ample built in cupboards, space for a bed, a dressing and bathing area. The block contained 22 ‘minimal’ flats, 4 double flats, 3 studio flats and quarters for the staff and kitchens at the north end. The building was a test in communal living. In 1936 the kitchen closed, but in its place came the Isobar, designed by Marcel Breuer and F. R. S. Yorke where the middle class intelligentsia would meet.

The post-war period saw a steady decline of the building and in 1973 Camden Council took over, as Pritchards were unable to carry out comprehensive maintenance. Despite the listed building status Camden were also unable to maintain it and it fell into further disrepair. Luckily in 2000, the Borough made a bold move that saved the Lawn Road Flats – it announced a competition for restoration of the building. The winner, a team made up of the Notting Hill Home Ownership (NHHO), Avanti Architects with Alan Conisbee Associates as structural engineers and the Isokon Trust, started the restoration job in 2003. Most of the restored flats were sold to key workers on a shared ownership basis, and in order to cross-finance the works, the bigger flats went on the open market.

This 25 sqm studio flat is situated on the third floor, and offers a living/sleeping area, a separate kitchen, a dressing area and bathroom, and a sweet little balcony, at the back of the building, which looks onto the nature reserve.

If you fancy minimal living, view the listing here.

Images courtesy Parkheath Estate Agent.

What’s on
Architecture on TV season
at BFI Southbank
June 2016

There’s a great series of films and talks coming up this month at the BFI exploring TV’s role in British architecture. Television has long been an outlet for Britain’s most imaginative critical voices, including JG Ballard, Iain Nairn and Raymond Williams, all of whom make appearances in programmes in the season. 

Tickets are £11.00, concs £8.50 and are vailable here. 

Thursday 9 June, 6.10pm
Architecture’s Arrival on Screen: Kenneth Clark + intro by Arts Producer John Wyver
Great  Temples of the World: Chartres Cathedral
(ATV 1965. Prod Alastair Reid. 45min)
Great Temples of the World: Karnak
(ATV 1966. Prod Jon Scoffield. 45min)

Before his ground-breaking work on Civilisation (BBC 1969), Kenneth Clark tested out various formulas for presenting the arts on television. In his Great Temples of the World Series, Clark is his usual affable (if reserved) self, and invites the audience along with him as he investigates some of the most celebrated religious sites in the world. Chartres places the cathedral into the context of its stubbornly modernising town and provides an assessment that doubles as an introduction to Gothic architecture. In Karnak, we’re invited along for a journey that brings Clark’s connoisseur eye to bear on this magisterial, but less familiar, aspect of Ancient Egypt.

Monday 13 June, 6.20pm
Nairn’s Journeys + talk and Q&A with writer and filmmaker Jonathan Meades
Nairn’s Europe: Oxford – Padua
(BBC 1970. Prod Barry Bevins. 30min)
Nairn’s Journeys: Football Towns: Huddersfield and Halifax
(BBC 1975. Prod Barry Bevins. 30min)

Ian Nairn set out to prove on national television that architecture was more than just structural design – that it was the creation of place, space and identity. These anecdotal documentaries show Nairn communicating this in his typically brilliant and quixotic style. They take viewers around the British Isles and Europe, with Nairn setting his sights on everything from major civic edifices to pubs and markets – witness here his barbed admiration of Oxford’s cloistered colleges and his love affair with the industrial north.

Perspectives on Pevsner + intro by Charles O’Brien and Simon Bradley, current editors of the ‘Pevsner Architectural Guides’
Contrasts: The Buildings of England
(BBC 1968. Prod David Cheshire. 30min)
Good Afternoon
(Thames 1973. 10min (extract))
Travels with Pevsner: Worcestershire
(BBC 1998. Dir Lucy Jago. 50min

Nikolaus Pevsner was the author of the Pevsner Architectural Guides, the essential handbook for any architecture enthusiast. These screenings celebrate his televisual legacy, showing the man at work in a special edition of Contrasts, alongside an episode of Travels with Pevsner, which reveals his influence on a generation of broadcasters – especially Jonathan Meades, who playfully deconstructs the historian’s seriousness.

Wednesday 22 June, 8.50pm
Cities & Critics + intro by director Mike Dibb
Where We Live Now: The Country & The City
(BBC 1979. Dir Mike Dibb. 50min)
The prodigious cultural theorist Raymond Williams makes a rare TV appearance charting the exploitative and sometimes poetic relationship between Britain’s rural landscapes and the rise of the industrial city.
Twilight City
(C4 1989. Dir Reece Auguiste. 50min)
The Black Audio Film Collective’s captivating docudrama explores London’s social and structural changes in Thatcher’s London, entwining a fictional émigré narrative with interviews from critics including Paul Gilroy and Homi Bhabha.

Sunday 26 June, 3.10pm
Concrete at a Crossroads + intro by Joseph Watson, London Creative Director, National Trust
The Pacemakers: Basil Spence
(1973 COI. 14min)
Where We Live Now: Architecture for Everyman
(1982 BBC. Prod Christopher Martin. 50min)
Heart by-Pass: Jonathan Meades in Birmingham
(1998 BBC. Dir David F Turnbull. 29min)

Television has often spearheaded the contentious debates that surround the concrete and steel of Britain’s post-war townscapes. Here we can see TV’s contribution in its full range: from the Central Office of Information’s pithy, optimistic profile of Basil Spence and Patrick Nuttgens’ examination of the modern movement from the steps of The Southbank Centre, to Jonathan Meades’ droll reclamation of all things Brum.

Thursday 20 June, 6.15pm
Transport as Architecture: Ballard to Banham + intro by writer and journalist Paul Morley
Crash!
(1971 BBC. Dir Harley Cokeliss. 17min)
The Thing is… Motorways
(1990 C4. Dir Bob Bee. 20min)
A Ballard double bill sees the author deconstruct the beauty and menace of a motorised society in Crash! and then pile into a hatchback with Paul Morley to ruminate on the utopian sentiments behind motorways and service stations.
Reyner Banham Loves LA
(1972 BBC. Dir Julian Cooper. 51min)
In a compelling tribute to LA, Reyner Banham contends that the freeway is not only the best way to see architecture, but that it’s architecture itself.

 For sale
4 Bedroom Town House
Blackberry Hill, Slackhead, Milnthorpe
Cumbria
£315,000

I’ve already checked whether it’s commutable from London, it’s not, even if you had your own helicopter. Can you imagine the price of this house if it was in London?!

Anyway, the house if part of a small terrace of five houses on top of Blackberry Hill. It was designed in 1970 (thank you Modernism in Metroland for the info) by Keith Scott of Building Design Partnership — the firm behind Preston Bus Station. 

To make most of the views the house has an upside down arrangement, you enter on the first floor where there are two bedrooms and a bathroom. Down stairs on the ground floor there are two further bedrooms. On the top floor is a large living room (and I must admit I would have preferred floor to ceiling windows and a balcony here, but what do I know), the kitchen, a cloakroom and a ‘storm porch’ (storm porch?!)

View the listing here.

Modernist Lives
Kate Sclater and Tim Balaam
Dulwich Wood Park Estate
London SE19

I can’t believe my last ‘Modernist Lives’ blog post was over a year ago. After all the work on the book I ran out of steam a bit, but fear not, I’m back. And I’ve almost gone full circle—one of the first people I featured here was Jim Green, in his flat in one of the towers on the Dulwich Park Estate. Here I visit old friends Tim and Kate and their two young sons in their four-bedroom house on the same estate. 

Tell us a bit about yourselves and where you live
We are graphic designers and have run our studio, Hyperkit, for the last 15 years. We have two sons — Herb is 8, and Otto is 6. We live in a 1960s townhouse on the Dulwich Wood Park estate, which is between Dulwich and Crystal Palace, and is managed by the Dulwich Estate. It’s in a cul-de-sac of identical houses that face one another, and on the estate there are also several high-rise blocks. The houses and blocks were designed by Austin Vernon & Partners. Although our private gardens are quite small, there is plenty of communal green space.

Describe your home
Our house is a typical townhouse of the period which has a garage at ground level, integral to the house, living spaces on the first floor, and bedrooms on the top floor. Although there are lots of townhouses in the area, there are slight variations in their layout and detailing. Ours has floor to ceiling windows at either end of the first floor, which is quite open plan. It has some original features, such as the narrow teak floorboards, but we have also upgraded other aspects such as the built-in wardrobes in the bedrooms. We haven’t made any major changes to the house - what we’ve done has been mainly cosmetic.

How long have you lived here?
We’ve lived here nearly 9 years, and both boys were born in the house.

Did you know much about the estate before you moved in, what attracted you to living here?
We’ve lived in the area for 20 years since studying at Camberwell College of Arts. We were living in an 1930s flat in Forest Hill and wanted more space and thought one of these houses would be perfect. We’d seen lots in the area so we just drove around at weekends looking for ‘For Sale’ boards. We knew about this estate and had a couple of friends here, so we were pleased when we saw this house on the market. And when we looked around we could see ourselves living here — the open plan nature, the space and the light were all really strong selling points.

Do you pay service charges?
Yes, we pay a small quarterly charge to the Dulwich Estate which covers the maintenance of the communal areas. The gardeners come on a regular basis and residents also take pride in the area, so its always neat and tidy.

What are the neighbours like?
The neighbours are lovely, and we’ve made some good friends living here. We didn’t appreciate what moving to a cul-de-sac would mean, but it has really enriched our lives! Its such a sociable place to live for both us and the children. There are many other families with young children and the boys can go out and knock for friends and play in the street largely unsupervised which is a great thing to have in London.

What’s the area like?
It’s green and quiet but with really good transport links and lots of great amenities within easy reach. The boys go swimming at the National Sports Centre in Crystal Palace which has an olympic sized pool (and is also of architectural significance, having been designed by the LCC under Leslie Martin in 1953-4), and they also cycle at Herne Hill Velodrome which was founded for the 1948 London Olympics. We love walking in Dulwich Woods or cycling along the private road that leads down to Dulwich Village.

Best things about living here?
The best thing about living here is the sense of community. There’s always someone who can help you out or lend you something — in fact one neighbour is in the process of establishing a ‘lending library’ that we can all register items with via a website. We also come together for different events such as egg hunts for the kids at Easter, or Halloween gatherings when we all bring out food and drink while the kids go door to door. Every year we have a ‘Big Lunch’ street party where we have a trestle table running down the street and we all have lunch together. There’s even a baking competition that goes along with it with an engraved cake slice as a trophy!

And the worst?
The floor to ceiling windows are great, but you also have to be aware that you can be on show to the neighbours or people walking by!

Finally, money no object, what’s your dream home?
We’ve always had a dream to build our own house, so if money was no object we’d definitely hunt out a plot and commission an architect.

If you live in a modernist estate and would like to be featured here, do get in touch!