please empty your brain below
That Today. Tomorrow. Together slogan sounds familiar to me. Have they stolen it from @thisbrutalhouse?

dg writes: No.

Dan | 26.09.21 - 7:59 a.m. | #

If it's looked after as well as the previous stuff, it will end up the same in 50 years. Only difference being I probably won't be around to see it. A neglected, self-contained estate in the back of beyond is always going to end up in a sorry state. At affordable prices, at any rate. Possibly different if it's a hunting lodge in Sussex.

Chz | 26.09.21 - 9:36 a.m. | #

Love the differences between the side-by-side 2011/2021 photos.

Cornish Cockney | 26.09.21 - 10:03 a.m. | #

Nonetheless, I feel that the opening allusion is a bit harsh.

MartinG | 26.09.21 - 10:20 a.m. | #

I'd always had visiting Thamesmead on my "to do" list. Sadly it looks like there's not much point in going any more.

Scott | Homepage | 26.09.21 - 10:47 a.m. | #

Remember going to the bar in the lakeside centre. One unexpected discovery was the plaque announcing that the building had been officially opened by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. One might have hoped the latter might have made some offhand remark about his view of Thamesmead.

Dominic H | 26.09.21 - 12:13 p.m. | #

Has the water jet been switched off?

dg writes: Look closely at the penultimate photo.

Michael T | 26.09.21 - 4:45 p.m. | #

The worst thing about these new build flats is that they always have ceiling to floor windows. I much prefer a windowsill.

John | 26.09.21 - 6:09 p.m. | #

I’ve worked in two brutalist public buildings, one of which, the Barbican Centre, is now getting its third (or maybe fourth?) makeover to try and render it vaguely public-friendly. Acres of concrete, hard surfaces and windswept spaces, often on a monumental scale, are some of the most depressing environments to live or work in.

It was probably predictable that the water feature in the new piazza would be cut to save money and, of course, there’s no possibility of flowerbeds, plants, grass or anything else natural that would require regular care and maintenance, because no council or developer would pay for it these days. So it leaves yet another desolate expanse of paving that’s user-hostile instead of people-friendly.

Yes, the new Thamesmead architecture is predictable and dull in concept (see endless other current flats developments across London) but it looks in the photos to be more human in scale and, at least psychologically, even brick cladding is a warmer surface than grey shuttered concrete. It may help residents feel their buildings are more homes than architectural concepts.

Labourer | 27.09.21 - 12:08 p.m. | #

Thanks for this update, haven't visited Thamesmead for a few years now. I grew up in Bexleyheath, did dinghy sailing lessons on Thamesmead lake, had the odd driving lesson on Belvedere Road - quiet because it was a dead-end and went out with a girl called Jacqui who lived on the estate.

Agree with you about the boring, new architecture and disagree with with Labourer's comments. It's seldom about the design of the architecture itself and all about the funding and politics. Thamesmead never got its planned rail link and still hasn't decades later which is what made it so isolated. Then it got used as a dumping ground for people without the necessary social support. If social housing hadn't gone out of fashion with successive governments, but mainly with neoliberalism and the Conservatives, and proper taxation/funding had continued to be applied, Thamesmead would have been a very different story.

Lovely to see the Lakeside Centre being used like that, it looks great. I wonder what the planning for sea level rise on this former marshland now is...

Colin | Homepage | 03.10.21 - 2:24 p.m. | #











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