Mobilising Housing Histories-Learning from London's Past for a Sustainable Future

255 Pages·2017·10.615 MB·\255

by  Peter Guillery (Author), David Kroll (Author)

LEARNING FROM
LONDON'S PAST
EDITED BY PETER GUILLERY
AND DAVID KROLL
M O B I L I S I N G
H O U S I N G
H I S T O R I E S
M O B I L I S I N G
H O U S I N G
H I S T O R I E S
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© RIBA Publishing, 2017
Published by RIBA Publishing, 66 Portland Place, London, W1B 1AD
ISBN 978-1-85946-631-5
The rights of Peter Guillery and David Kroll to be identified as the Editors of this Work have been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 sections 77 and 78.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Commissioning Editor: Elizabeth Webster
Design and production: Michèle Woodger
Printed and bound by WG Baird Ltd
Cover image: The London County Council’s Morris Walk Estate in Woolwich, under construction
in 1964 using the Larsen-Nielsen prefabrication system, also showing speculatively
built Victorian houses beyond, on Woodland Terrace and Maryon Road.
While every effort has been made to check the accuracy and quality of the information given in
this publication, neither the Authors nor the Publisher accept any responsibility for the
subsequent use of this information, for any errors or omissions that it may contain, or for any
misunderstandings arising from it.
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LEARNING FROM
LONDON'S PAST
EDITED BY PETER GUILLERY
AND DAVID KROLL
M O B I L I S I N G
H O U S I N G
H I S T O R I E S
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have contributed in many ways to this book. First and foremost, of course, are the
individual authors who have in some cases separately acknowledged help received in their
endnotes. The editors and publishers would like particularly to thank a few whose contributions
have been more general. Professor Matthew Davies and Olwen Myhill at the Institute of Historical
Research were instrumental in bringing about and hosting the June 2013 conference from which
this book arises. At the Bartlett School of Architecture in University College London, the Bartlett
Faculty Vice-Dean of Research Professor Murray Fraser, Luis Rego and Mark Burgess have been
supportive. UCL’s Urban Laboratory was also an influential partner. Professor Andrew Saint, General
Editor of the Survey of London, has been a long-term source of wisdom for both editors. His
contribution to this book extends well beyond his foreword. Helen Jones, also at the Survey of
London, has almost effortlessly produced all the book’s drawings, and Joanna Smith at Historic
England has read drafts and made helpful comments. Christine Wagg not only advised on text but
also generously facilitated Peabody sponsorship.
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ABOUT THE SPONSORS
The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
The Bartlett School of Architecture is part of The Bartlett, University College London’s Faculty of
the Built Environment. It was established in 1841 and is UCL’s world-leading centre for education
and research in architecture. It has been voted the best school of architecture in the UK in the
AJ100 survey of practices by The Architects’ Journal for 13 years in a row, and 2016 saw the school
ranked second in the world in the international QS World University rankings for Architecture and
the Built Environment.
Located in the heart of London, the School of Architecture is at the forefront of international
research and teaching, encompassing interdisciplinary collaboration and methodologies.
Bartlett students are amongst the most sought-after in the UK and Europe for their outstanding
drive, creativity and skills. With around 800 students, 40% of whom represent more than 45
nations, and more than 220 staff of diverse backgrounds, The Bartlett is widely known as one of
the most influential, exciting and innovative architecture schools in the world.
Ten per cent of students are doctoral candidates. Over the past 20 years they have received more
RIBA medals than any other school. Many have gone on to occupy leading roles in established
practices worldwide; many others have set up award-winning businesses of their own. Recent
examples include Asif Khan, Bio-Bean, Bombass & Parr, Duggan Morris, Factory Fifteen, HUT,
Moxon, Threefold and WeMadeThat.
www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture
Institute of Historical Research
The Institute of Historical Research (IHR) is one of nine member institutes of the School of
Advanced Study, part of the University of London.
Founded in 1921 by AF Pollard, the Institute of Historical Research is an important resource and
meeting place for researchers from all over the world. Its mission is to:
• promote the study of history and an appreciation of the importance of the past among
academics and the general public, in the UK and internationally, and to provide institutional
support and individual leadership for this broad historical community
• offer a wide range of services, both onsite and remotely, which promote and facilitate
excellence in historical research, teaching and scholarship in the UK, by means of its library,
seminars, conferences, fellowships, training, consultancy, Continuing Professional
Development and publications (both electronic and in printed form)
• provide an accessible and stimulating portal for the exchange of ideas and information and
current developments in historical scholarship
• produce internationally regarded scholarship from our academic staff and research centres.
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Peabody
Peabody was established in 1862 by the American banker and philanthropist George Peabody.
Its mission is ‘to make London a city of opportunity for all by ensuring that as many people as
possible have a good home, a real sense of purpose and a strong feeling of belonging’.
It works solely in London, with a presence in the majority of London boroughs, owning and
managing around 28,000 homes and providing affordable housing for over 80,000 people. This
is set to grow with 8,000 new homes planned across the capital, meaning Peabody will provide a
good home for one in every 100 Londoners.
Every penny that is generated from sales on the open market is reinvested into providing more
affordable homes and building thriving communities – expanding George Peabody’s founding
mission to more people than ever before.
As well as bricks and mortar, Peabody provides community programmes for the benefit of its
residents and for people living in the surrounding neighbourhoods, including employment and
training support, health and wellbeing projects, family support programmes, welfare benefits
advice, and activities for younger and older people. It supports over 23,000 hours of free-to-
access community activities each year. This work aims to tackle poverty at its roots, supporting
people to transform their lives and communities for the better.
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Ben Campkin is the author of Remaking London: Decline and Regeneration in Urban Culture
(IB Tauris, 2013), which received the 2015 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Foundation Book
Award and a commendation in the 2013 RIBA President’s Awards for Research. He is co-editor of
Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (IB Tauris, 2007/2012), Engaged
Urbanism: Cities and Methodologies (IB Tauris, 2016), Sexuality and Gender at Home: Experience,
Politics, Transgression (Bloomsbury, 2017) and the series Urban Pamphleteer (2013–). Campkin is
Senior Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London, and Director of UCL’s Urban Laboratory.
Irina Davidovici is a post-doctoral researcher at the gta Institute’s Chair for the History of Urban
Design in ETH Zurich. Born in Bucharest, she qualified as an architect in London and worked with
Caruso St John and Herzog & de Meuron between 1998 and 2002. She completed her doctorate at
the University of Cambridge in 2008 and until 2012 taught history and theory of architecture at
Kingston University. Her research bridges the practice, teaching, and critical interpretation of
architecture, and has been published in numerous books and journals including OASE, AA Files and
Casabella. Davidovici is the author of Forms of Practice: German-Swiss Architecture 1980–2000 (gta
Verlag, 2012), editor of Colquhounery: Alan Colquhoun from Bricolage to Myth (AA Publications, 2015)
and recipient of the RIBA President’s Research Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis 2009.
Richard Dennis is Emeritus Professor of Geography at UCL, where he has taught courses on ‘Cities
and Modernity’ and ‘London: A Geographical Introduction’, and is a major contributor to Ramble
London (www.ucl.ac.uk/ramble-london), a series of guided walks through the capital. He is
currently researching apartment housing in London and Canadian cities, and public transport in
Victorian and Edwardian London. His book, Cities in Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2008),
focused on streets, buildings and infrastructure in London, New York and Toronto, 1840–1930. He is
on the editorial committee of The London Journal, in which he has also published papers on London’s
earliest ‘high-rise’ flats, Queen Anne’s Mansions, and on the early history of the Underground. As an
enthusiastic ‘Literary Londoner’ he has written extensively about the novelist George Gissing in late
Victorian London. He is preparing a co-edited book on Architectures of Hurry (Routledge, forthcoming).
Peter Guillery is a Senior Research Associate for the Survey of London, the leading reference work
on the history and architecture of England’s capital city, now produced from UCL’s Bartlett School of
Architecture. Since 1986 he has contributed to volumes on Poplar, Blackwall and the Isle of Dogs,
Clerkenwell, Marylebone and, as editor, Woolwich. He is now leading work on Whitechapel, where
research is being co-ordinated through a participative website (surveyoflondon.org). His
investigation of South Acton came at the end of a spell away from the Survey spent recording
threatened buildings across London. He is also the author of The Small House in Eighteenth-Century
London (Yale University Press, 2004) and the editor of Built from Below: British Architecture and the
Vernacular (Routledge, 2011).
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Owen Hatherley was born in Southampton, England, in 1981. He received a PhD in 2011 from
Birkbeck College, London for a thesis on Constructivism and Americanism, published in 2016 as The
Chaplin Machine (Pluto Press). He writes regularly for The Architects’ Journal, Architectural Review,
Dezeen, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The New Humanist, and is the author of several
books: Militant Modernism (Zero, 2009), A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso, 2010),
Uncommon: An Essay on Pulp (Zero, 2011), Across the Plaza (Strelka, 2012), A New Kind of Bleak:
Journeys through Urban Britain (Verso, 2012), Landscapes of Communism (Penguin, 2015) and The
Ministry of Nostalgia (Verso, 2016). He also edited and introduced an updated edition of Ian Nairn’s
Nairn’s Towns (Notting Hill Editions, 2013), and wrote texts for the exhibition Brutalust: Celebrating
Post-War Southampton, at the K6 Gallery, Southampton. He lives in Woolwich.
Tanis Hinchcliffe taught architectural history for many years in the School of Architecture at
London’s University of Westminster. She has researched many aspects of the history of architecture
and urbanism, especially domestic building in France and England. She has a longstanding interest
in the production of suburban developments in Islington, public housing policy and production,
and post-war gentrification. She is the author of North Oxford (Yale University Press, 1992) and (with
John Bold) Discovering London’s Buildings (Frances Lincoln, 2009), as well as many articles in
collections and journals.
Simon Hudspith studied at Newcastle University and won the RIBA Bronze medal as an
undergraduate. He then gained a Harkness Fellowship and continued his education at the Southern
California Institute of Architecture and at the University of Pennsylvania where he won the Samuel
Huckel Architecture Prize. He gained professional experience at the Terry Farrell Partnership, Venturi
Rauch & Scott Brown and ORMS, prior to setting up Panter Hudspith Architects in 1988. He was the
partner in charge of the Collection in Lincoln, Christ’s Lane in Cambridge, Princesshay in Exeter and
Davygate in York, which have won a combined total of 19 awards including three RIBA, three Civic
Trust, one AIA and 12 construction awards. Simon also oversaw the completion of one of the blocks
in the Athletes’ Village for the 2012 Olympics, and Royal Road, an award winning affordable housing
project in Southwark.
David Kroll is Lecturer in Architecture at the University of South Australia and has a background in
professional practice, academic teaching and research. Born in Berlin, he qualified and practiced as
an architect in London, which became the formative ground for his research passion. During work in
architectural practice, he was involved in a number of housing projects including the Athletes’
Village for C.F. Møller Architects. His PhD thesis, completed at the Institute of Historical Research,
London, focuses on the history of speculative housing in London in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. It was supervised in collaboration with the Survey of London and shortlisted for
the RIBA President’s Research Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis 2015. He held previous
lecturing positions at the University of East London, Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Kent. In
2015 he relocated to Australia, where he teaches architecture and researches housing-related topics,
exploring historical and theoretical perspectives, as well as contemporary issues and technologies.
Sofie Pelsmakers is a chartered architect and environmental designer with over15 years’
experience designing, building and teaching sustainable architecture, including deep retrofit.
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
She is co-founder of Architecture for Change, a not-for-profit environmental building organisation,
head of research at ECD Architects and lecturer at the Sheffield School of Architecture where she
co-leads an MSc in Sustainability. She completed her doctoral research in building energy demand
reduction at the UCL Energy Institute, where she investigated the heat loss of pre-1919 un-insulated
suspended timber ground floors and heat loss reduction potential of interventions. She is author of
The Environmental Design Pocketbook (RIBA Publishing, 2012), which synthesises her practical and
academic expertise to support the building industry towards a significant change in its design and
building practices. It received commendation for the RIBA President’s Awards for Outstanding
Practice Based Research 2012.
Simon Pepper is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at Liverpool University. He trained at the AA and
wrote his PhD under Joseph Rykwert on Renaissance Italian military architecture. He has worked in
private practice, in a housing policy division of the Department of the Environment, and at the
British School in Rome, the University of Virginia and the University of Minnesota. His books include
Housing Improvement: Goals and Strategy (Lund Humphries, 1971), (with Nicholas Adams) Firearms
and Fortifications: Military Architecture and Siege Warfare in Sixteenth Century Siena (University of
Chicago Press, 1986), and (with Alistair Black and Kaye Bagshaw) Books, Buildings and Social
Engineering: Early Public Libraries in Britain from Past to Present (Routledge, 2009).
David Roberts is Architectural History and Theory Tutor and Research Ethics Fellow at the Bartlett
School of Architecture. Alongside his work at UCL, he is part of collaborative art practice Fugitive
Images and of architecture collective Involve. He uses poetry and performance to explore the
relation between people and place. He has exhibited, lectured and published work related to public
housing, architecture, critical methodologies and site-specific practice. His PhD thesis in
architectural design, ‘Make Public: Performing public housing in regenerating east London’,
explored the history and future of two east London housing estates undergoing regeneration: the
Haggerston Estate, a 1935–8 London County Council neo-Georgian perimeter block demolished in
2014; and Balfron Tower, a 1965–7 Brutalist high-rise designed by Ernő Goldfinger facing
refurbishment and privatisation in 2016. A version of his chapter for this book has won a RIBA
President’s Award for Research 2016.
Andrew Saint works part-time for the Survey of London, of which he was the General Editor
between 2006 and 2015. He has written a number of books including Richard Norman Shaw (1976
and 2010), The Image of the Architect (1983), Towards A Social Architecture: The Role of England in
Post-War School-Building (1987), and Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (2007), all
published by Yale University Press. Between 1995 and 2006 he was a professor in the Department of
Architecture at Cambridge.
Colin Thom is a Senior Research Associate for the Survey of London. A Fine Art graduate of the
University of Glasgow, Colin worked in the archive of London Transport Museum before joining the
Survey, whose volumes he has contributed to since 1994. He recently edited the landmark 50th
volume, Battersea: Houses and Housing (Yale University Press, 2013). He is also the author of
Researching London’s Houses: An Archives Guide (Historical Publications, 2005).
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