Alexandra Road Estate
Alexandra Road Estate | |
---|---|
Brutalism | |
Listing | |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
Designated | 18 August 1993 |
Reference no. | 1130403 |
The Alexandra Road estate (officially the Alexandra and Ainsworth estate, but often referred to as Rowley Way, the name of its main thoroughfare) is a
Estate
The estate consists of three parallel east–west blocks, and occupies a crescent-shaped site bounded on the south by Boundary Road,
The lower four-storey building along Rowley Way contains maisonettes with shared access, terraces, and gardens overlooking the park at the rear. Maisonettes also occupy the top two levels of the larger eight-storey building opposite, with entrance from a walkway on the 7th floor that runs the entire length of the structure. Dwellings in the lower floor in this block are entered from open stairs serving two dwellings per floor. The flat roofs of the stepped elevation provides private outdoor areas for every home. Garage parking is located beneath the building, and underneath the building at the rear alongside the railway tracks.
Development and history
Since the early 1950s,
The Alexandra Road Estate may be seen as Brown's culminating, and largest scale, effort to apply these principles to the design of high-density public housing. Five houses on Winscombe Street, built in 1967, were his first experiment with the terrace type. The Fleet Road project, begun about the same time and consisting of 71 houses, a shop, and a studio, arranged in parallel terraced rows, was a further application of the idea.
Public Inquiry
The estate received much criticism during and after its construction because of its very high cost (particularly compared with tower blocks), caused by the complicated nature of its construction, unforeseen foundation problems, and the delays caused by those at a time of very high inflation, reaching 20% per year at one point in the 1970s. In 1978 a
Although there were indeed a significant delay and an increase in cost of approximately four times the originally commissioned tender, the Inquiry may have been politically motivated.[4] Mark Swenarton cites several factors for its launch: The campaigning Conservatives tried to allege that Labour was incompetent in managing the council and an increasingly pressured Labour hoping to relieve itself from the public anger of the spending by raising the transparency and potentially find the roots of the problem with the Conservative leadership 1968–1971.[5]
The outcome of the Inquiry published in seven reports mainly made "the apparent failure of the councillors to understand the contractual obligations that they had undertaken"[6] responsible for the mismanagement and was not successful in blaming the architect as had been hoped by some. Despite there being no findings of a mismanagement on his part, however, being the subject of a Public Inquiry destroyed Neave Brown's reputation in the UK where he never built again.[7][8]
Alexandra Road Estate today
The estate has suffered less vandalism than many Camden estates, and it was granted
After a continuing career including international
Other sites
The
References
- ^ Great Buildings Online.
- ^ Wu Wei's Housing terraces in the UK (Part II)
- ^ a b "Neave Brown". Directory of Architects & Designers. The Modern House. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
- ISBN 978-1-84822-204-5.
- ISBN 978-1-84822-204-5.
- ISBN 978-1-84822-204-5.
- ^ Swenarton, Mark (12 January 2018). "Neave Brown Obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
- ISBN 978-1-84822-204-5.
- ^ English Heritage Images of England.
- ^ "Neave Brown in conversation with Mark Swenarton". pre-empts the release of AA Files 67. Architectural Association School of Architecture. 3 December 2013. Archived from the original on 3 March 2014. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
- ^ Oliver Wainwright, "'I'm dumbfounded!' … Neave Brown on bagging an award for the building that killed his career". The Guardian, 6 October 2017. Accessed 6 October 2017
- ^ "Neave Brown wins Royal Gold Medal for architecture". Retrieved 6 October 2017.
Further reading
Swenarton, Mark (3 March 2014). "Politics versus architecture: the Alexandra Road public enquiry of 1978–1981". Planning Perspectives. 29 (4): 423–446.
External links
- Municipal Dreams: The Alexandra Road Estate, Camden: ‘a magical moment for English housing’, a blog article including an extensive list of sources.
- One Below the Queen: Rowley Way Speaks for Itself A 2010 documentary made by Alexandra Road estate residents themselves. Viewable online.
- Alexandra & Ainsworth Estate Tenants and Residents Association