please empty your brain below

Re the Dunboyne Estate and "The entire development has been secured behind a protective boundary, with black metal railings screening what used to be the two public entrances"

Presumably the roads within this development are owned/maintained privately and not by the council? However, if they are in council control, general public access to them shouldn't be restricted/prohibited.

dg writes: The estate's pedestrianised, so the road exists solely for residents' parking and access.

From your photo, the development looks likes comprising portacabins. I like the style of housing in the other two developments though.
Some great pictures - though I entirely see what you mean about the risk of arousing suspicions of motives other than architectural. The contrast with yesterday's radio-fest is notable, but such contrasts form DG's bestmost selling point, I reckon.
I drive past the edge of the Whittington Estate quite often and have been impressed how well kept it still looks. I wonder what they're like to live in though.
One of the challenges for present-day social housing developers is that when existing and potential tenants are consulted about design, they overwhelmingly say they want "traditional" design and construction - no modernist fantasies, however well they might turn out. People dislike the idea of living in a social experiment, or in buildings that are obviously social housing. So we clad our concrete flats in thin slabs of brickwork, as in New London Vernacular...
Unusually in this case I disagree with dg. I believe we do need to encourage council estate tourism.

I am sure many of us are aware that social housing is rapidly disappearing in London and being replaced with upmarket developments with some concession to 'affordable housing' which no one can afford and which is invariably at some point reduced with the agreement of the local council due to not being financially viable for the developer.

There are already attempts by some residents of some estates to highlight the lack of support from their local borough council.

A good example is the http://opengardenestates.com/ which highlight certain boroughs that were proponents of social housing, but are now desperate to remove these residents from their housing registers (dare I say Southwark and Lambeth are prime candidates?).

There are many examples in London where residents are offered no option but to accept below market rates for their properties and allow developers to build high density, unaffordable for the average Londoner, deposit boxes for non-domiciles. Even Boris Johnson stated in the case of the Elephant and Castle, residents should be given fair recompense.

I am not talking about being Grenfell groupies congregating like vultures to take pictures of human misery, but the simple recognition that human dignity is at stake. If we demonize these places it just makes it easier for councils to socially cleanse them, because we are ignorant of what is going on.

What dg also misses especially in Camden is properties on many of these listed estate are already in private hands and are considered desirable by many families who are not entitled to social housing support. Just visit the Alexandra & Ainsworth or Dunboyne estate on a weekend. Personally I think these demographically mixed estates are an improvement on what is happening in the Elephant and Castle where Southwark have effectively removed a potential burden on their finances by socially cleansing the area and due to the high density nature of the new development substantially increasing their future revenue through Council Tax.
Wot? Only 4 comments? I'll wade in then.

Can't wait to get my hands on this book.

Love this sort of stuff. Always wanted to live in the Brunswick Centre. Remember doing some architectural tourism at Alexandra Road years ago, trying not to peer into people's homes too much.

Alexandra Road stars in Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering (along with Jude Law and Juliette Binoche).
Interestingly, another Neave Brown designed housing block in Fleet Road NW5 is described in A Guide to the Architecture of London: 'this exclusive semi public realm results in the visitor feeling intrusive and the resident feeling invaded'

dg writes: That is indeed the Dunboyne Estate, under its original name.
I live on Maiden Lane Estate, nice to see it mentioned here! Not sure what its reputation is like these days, but I've rarely had any problems living there.
These estates are a remarkable collective example of more optimistic generous times. The photos on such a bright and vivid day capture this perfectly. People think they may be architect's misguided dreams turning into a concrete jungle nightmare.

I know someone who worked Camden's architect's department at the time. He has also done expert witness work on several tower block failures and contributed press articles on Grenfell. In a recent posting on an architect's forum he wrote this:

"I left school in 1954 aged 16 to go and study architecture and build a better future. I never expected to live in a country where I would hear a Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, describe the rapid expansion in food banks in recent years as a "rather uplifting" show of charity. What planet is he living on?

I never expected 63 years later, and aged 80, to find I was living in a country where the attitudes of those in power, would echo those of Gradgrind, Scrooge and Mr Bumble the Beadle. I never expected to live in a city like Cambridge and lose count of the homeless people living rough each night. That hasn't happened by chance. It is deliberate government policy. It doesn't have to be like this."











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