Project interrupted: public housing in London today

The first part, pioneers, briefly introduces the background of this research.

3
In a conversation with Neave Brown and Paul Karakusevic in 2015, Karakusevic
began with the following question, as a quote:
Neave, it has taken my practice 15 years to build just over 200 homes, whereas in
seven years in Camden, you managed something close to a 700. What were the
special conditions to make that possible?

However much as I would like to elaborate on the nationalized production of housing,

the Keynesian project finally precipitated its demise so abruptly and so eventually …
With the 1979 general election giving power to a conservative government led by
Thatcher, the post-war housing programme which had effectively lasted for more
than 3 decades, was brought to an end. This programme had ensured that almost 50
per cent of the population was accommodated in public-sector homes by the mid-
1970s.

Utopia on Trial, is a book or report produced by Alice Coleman, and could be read as
a UK apostle or protégé to Jane Jacobs, Oscar Newman, calls the initial signs of
mixed tenure and derelict status of council estates as the utopia on trial.
6
In view of the ongoing process of privitisation and lack of public money dedicated to
its management, and most importantly, the shift of residency and mixture of tenure
after the introduction of the right-to-buy scheme.
7
This diagram is drawn to capture the stock of privatised public land
8
And council estates under threat of regeneration
9
Now, with housing departments for local councils disbanded, vast swathes of public
land sold off, and countless social homes transferred to private management and
private ownership through the Right-to scheme, the heavy burden of getting the
population housed, was passed over to the private sector.
10
As the vast majority of London is already an urban built-up, the sites of such
development is often based on an existing social housing estate. This is Orchard
Gardens, perhaps one of the most publicly known development of the year as it is
shortlisted for the RIBA stirling prize recently.
11
It is part of the redevelopment of the original Heygate Estate. Over 2000 social
homes are lost permanently while ironically enough, the project worked rather
effortfuly on preserving all the trees under the TPO order.
12
The social cost of displacement and the loss of net social units are epitomic of
regeneration projects across London
13
An such exercise is believed as systematically organised and executed
14
The political agenda, somehow regardless of the party in residence, also favoured
the stigmatisation of council estates: lamentable, valueless, worthy only of being
scrubbed, an unwanted past of Britain.
15
And various legislative documents and guidelines for practices are being drafted
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to regulate and facilitate regeneration by private partners.
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17
To identify the overall urgency of regeneration, maps are drawn that help identify the
geographical spread of council estates in London
18
Several walks have been for documentation purposes
19
With a focus on Tower Hamlets
20
Surveyed estates are mark with coloured pins to represent the degree to which the
estate is under threat of regeneration
21
Tower Hamlets is chosen due to its ratio of privatisation of council homes across the
3 decades following 1981, indicating a lurking gentrification
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22
While the vast stock of council housing is today under registered private
management and/or ownership.
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23
This area is close to the docks featuring with large working-class population before
the war, and
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24
Since it was significantly impacted by the airstrikes, it also featured a vast number of
post-war council housing construction amongst which there are the famous
Robinhood Gardens, and Balfron Tower.
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The key place at concern here, is Chrisp Street Market, at the core of Lansbury
estate
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It has since the 50s been the geographical and spiritual kernel of the local area
--
27
The Chrisp Street Market, a part of it was featured in the 1951 Festival of Britain,
Exhibition of Architecture in Lansbury
--
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Showcasing the municipal dream way of living and community interaction with a the
spatial typology of ground-level retail and maisonettes on the upper level. Tenants
are entitled to the view and interaction with the market and commercial street.
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29
The rest of the estate, mainly the erection of 5 council housing blocks and the ground
level retail units were finished later on in the 60-70s.
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30
This diagram shows the contemporary tenure mix of the residential blocks
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31
Among which we have two mid rise blocks with 16 units each, the Ennis House on
the right of the image, and the Kilmore house on the left.
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32
The Fitzgerald house is a 19-storey tower block, and its tenants have been mostly
evicted with very few lights on during the night.
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33
This is 2-30 Kerbey Street, with a communal courtyard, now enclosed with fences.
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34
The retail-maisonette units are more located in the north of the site.
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35
This shows a schematic plan and section of the retail-maisonette units
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36
This is the covered market overlay in the centre of the piazza.
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It was erected in the 80s to facilitate the street market culture that has since the 50s
become an iconic character and communal activity in this neighbourhood
38
and has supplied thousands of local tenants
39
with affordable goods throughout the years
--
40
The northern part of the site, the Clarissa House and the Aurora House of 8 units and
16 units of social housing,
41
have been demolished by the ongoing regeneration scheme.
42

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43
These two drawings, on the wall over there <>
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If read in combination with such index and the physical models, should demonstrate
the loss of literal, accessibility wise porosity.
45
Residential schedule comparison demonstrates the loss of social units
46
And the impact on the local real estate price sold
47
Their and benchmark for feasibility assessment,
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Also presents its inherent contradictions

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The design brief builds on such state of urgency
56
With an intention of proposing an alternative to the regeneration scheme by sheppard
robson, the methodology is introduced as the palimpsest
57
“A landscape for pure life,” as von Hofmannsthal puts it, the urban landscape of Paris
is the a counterpart in the social order to what Vesuvius is in the geographic order, a
menacing, hazardous massif, an ever-active June of revolution, a palimpsest.

Architecture or Revolution, was perhaps one of the first manifestos for public
provision for housing, and such slogan which so successfully justified the disciplinary
autonomy and progressive outwardness of architecture, seemed again to be
sentenced a death by either the famously discussed fall of Pruitt-igoe, or the 1980
venice biennale, La Strada Novissima.
58
The discursive construction of the tabula rasa utopia, in Tafuri terms, seems now
have been rendered obsolete. And when we revisit the tabula rasa mentality, what we
are faced with are not the radiant cities of Le Corbusier but the rewritable tablets
leaving traces of each layer visually insidious yet technically permanent. If Rossi
argues that architecture as the urban artefact should remain as the primordial and
eternal fabric of human activities,
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then the palimpsest formation of the urban fabric should be best read in the eye of
the geologist or archaeologist
60
Where the complex formation of the urban tissue or fabric with inclusion of both
mental and physical characters should be rendered as the result of a chronology of
geological movements and technonic shifts, faults, intrusions etc.
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This is meant to provide a proper way of reinterpretating the urban landscape; this is
an exemplary section of LBTW
62-67
With the following outstanding features
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Specifically in relation to the place and its immediate proximity,
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historical maps were firstly superimposed for a general image of such section
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For example this reading shows the persistency of the east india dock road
regardless of the surrounding layers – and within the terminology defined previously,
such road should be read as a fault that effectively incises and separates the
homogenous layers, leaving permanent traces
71
Also such idea should be directly readable from the plan
72
Title map layers, if read in relation to the material and socio-political manifestations,
should also help synthesise the dialectics between the base and the superstructure.
73
For example, in the 1910s, periphery blocks and tenement houses were typical for
working class population while the privilieged classes favoured garden cities and
detached houses;
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The war had devastated the existing fabric
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and they later became the test ground for tabula rasa radiant cities with high rise
tower blocks, and such shift is the joint venture between ambitious planners in LCC,
mouthpieces of AR and AJ, LCC successful flagship proposals and their public and
academic embellishment, and certain special subsidise schemes favouring high-rise
blocks in the 60s.
76
70s witnessed the widespread self-reflection of modernism from within and the
external critics. On the ground that postwar Keyesian scheme had supplied the
majority with the basics, their appetite for a free-choice economy flourished; inherent
contradictions in interest between GLC planners and national planning departments,
public architects and private sector with contractor architects, inabilities of a welfare
state economy for growth … all these factors combined to precipitate its demise
77
Semi detached houses were built once again yet with great quality, selling also for
much value. With the thrive of real estate speculations,
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potentials for exchange value had dominated over all aspects including architectural
quality, social context and aesthetics, with the decline of the disciplinary autonomy
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Apart from such retrospective, interpretive qualities, certain spatial qualities also
experienced such sea-changes and osciliations.
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One instance here should be based on the two categories of property boundary plots.
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Of which the two categories are drawn from two models: linear plots with fixed
frontage; square and semi-square plots
82
An interesting conclusive argument here should be expressed as the most common
frontage length of a linear block should be 7.5 metres; based on such conclusions
one also discerns the UK-specific land-ownership porosity condition of scattered,
often discontinuous leases among a larger plot of land dedicated for housing estates.
Such condition is exactly reflective of the RtB influence on the ownership structure of
the city.
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Which indicates 9 future directions of research,
Figure ground; area measurement or porosity ratio in figure ground; occupation and
ownership and rights; territorial dimensions; interfaces and boundaries; social logic of
space based on a Hillier research; network and graph with spatial and place syntax;
townscape; activities and interactions.
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Such means of abstraction and relation only serve to help classify and quantify the
characters of each cluster or type of space. The real task here regarding the
palimpsest condition should be the innovative and critical inventions based on
existing typologies extracted hereafter.