Cook's Camden: The Making of Modern Housing 2018

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Yet this double-terrace is only one part of the complex. Across a large landscaped green space there is another 3-story terrace of houses that runs alongside an existing estate from the 1930s and mirrors the railside environment, while at the far end of the estate there is a low-rise building that accommodates a school for children with special needs and other community programs. In its bringing together of diverse functions as part of a single, massive designed environment, Alexandra Road can be seen as one of the defining projects of mid-century architectural ambition, a form of urban megastructure, the “last great social housing project,” in the words of Andrew Freear. 8 Andrew Freear, “Alexandra Road: The last great social housing project,” AA Files, vol. 30, 1995, 35. It is worth remembering that Reyner Banham was snobbishly critical of “institutional megastructures” built by the state, such as Alexandra Road. See Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 192. Cook’s Camden, a richly illustrated history of the famous London Borough of Camden architects department of the 1970s, under Sydney Cook." —Owen Hatherley, Architectural Review The proposition of Alexandra Road was that, by drawing on the way in which London and other English cities had been composed, a modern urbanism could be generated without creating a rupture with either the existing grain of the city or the prevailing way of life. 7 Alexandra Road is one of most impressive spatial environments in London, vast and dramatic, but clearly domestic in composition.

Launched in 1964, the Borough of Camden’s first council established an architects department of 98, including 43 architects or assistants. Swenarton, with a wealth of sources and references, credits many remarkable team members, especially Neave Brown, winner of this year’s Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, best known for the Alexandra Road Scheme. He joined the team in 1965 only after assurances that Camden’s architects were given scope to pursue their own designs. Sydney Cook did. And Mark Swenarton’s meticulously compiled book, Cook’s Camden, describes who and how. It reads like 12 books in one. Those drawn to Brown after his RIBA Gold Medal award will find much to learn in Swenarton's book, though it's also recommended to architects who prefer dense low-rise housing to the residential high-rises that tend to garner more attention today." —review, Archidose

In hindsight, we can see that the West was undergoing a seismic change from what [Eric] Hobsbawm called the “golden age” of post-war welfare capitalism, marked by plenty and consensus, to the “crisis decades” of the 1970s and ’80s. 11 The extraordinary run of architectural achievement at Camden Council would prove short-lived. But the RIBA award can also be seen as part of a larger historic rehabilitation. Dismissed for decades as politically impractical and aesthetically compromised, the housing production of mid-century local authorities is now being vigorously reevaluated in our own era of unaffordable cities and triumphant privatization. One especially strong contribution to this reevaluation is Cook ’ s Camden: The Making of Modern Housing, a definitive account, by historian Mark Swenarton, of the radically experimental public housing estates designed and built by Camden Council from 1966 to 1975. The housing production of mid-century local authorities is now being reevaluated in our own era of unaffordable cities and triumphant privatization. Cook’s Camden is a vital history of a remarkable human achievement, and should be read by anyone with an interest in housing architecture, and what can be achieved for ordinary people." —Douglas Murphy, Architecture Today Yet it must be said that the projects themselves made easy targets for charges of extravagance. In good social democratic fashion, the ethos of Cook’s Camden was influenced by that earlier rallying cry of British modernism: Berthold Lubetkin’s assertion that “nothing is too good for the workers.” The designs of the estates were intensely unique, and often they incorporated unusual innovations such as walls with embedded heating. In line with Cook’s commitment to purpose-made design, the projects did not use off-the-shelf construction systems. The joinery in the interiors was bespoke. And it could be further argued that the sheer complexity of the buildings was needlessly wasteful. A writer for The Architects’ Journal, upon visiting Branch Hill, commented that “it is almost inevitable that both traditional forms of construction and particularly timber-framed housing would have proved considerably cheaper.” 14 More broadly it is hard not to conclude that Sydney Cook’s decision to build innovative modern council estates had the unintended consequence of exposing public finances to additional risks. Which raises the uncomfortable question: How beneficial were its benefits, really? In the ’80s, the political rejection of the welfare state would provoke critique of the council estates. Appendix 1 'Sydney Cook as I knew him' recollections by Neave Brown, Frank Dobson, John Green, Martin Morton and Peter Tábori

Unassuming Cook reassured me: “The only maths I’ve ever needed is the ability to count the walls in a square room and sometimes I get that wrong.” Flippant? No! Laughing, he added: “A good architect needs to know who to turn to for specialist skills.” To design guide, engineering blueprint, organisational flowchart, historical thriller and economics reader, Swenarton’s book adds an act of political audacity now largely forgotten but of great importance to me. Through its 1972 Housing Finance Act, Edward Heath’s Tory government aimed to wipe out all council housing by raising council rents to market levels in three stages and removing government funding. Even more remarkably, mortgage lenders refuse to deal with Alexandra Road, believing its concrete construction to be “risky.” To buy an apartment there requires paying the entire cost in cash, meaning only the very wealthiest aficionados can do so.Interview, Archpaperhttps://archpaper.com/2018/05/what-can-architects-learn-from-londons-best-social-and-urban-housing-projects/#gallery-0-slide-0 Swenarton, 278. The listings of the estate agent The Modern House frequently include properties in the Camden estates. The architecture of today that again claims to be a reinterpretation of the terrace tradition, the so-called New London Vernacular, is far more conventional in form, proportion, material, and general decorum . It has been widely discussed in recent years, and represents not just architects’ interest in historic types but also the economics of building materials and developers’ taste for planning risk. See Urban Design London, A New London Housing Vernacular. The book is the first to provide a comprehensive study of the work of recent RIBA Royal Gold Medal winner Neave Brown, as well as schemes by Benson & Forsyth, Peter Tábori, Colquhoun & Miller, Edward Cullinan and Farrell Grimshaw.

The Cook of the book’s title was that now-extinct figure: a borough architect. Sydney Cook (1910–1979) spent almost his entire career in public service, starting in the late 1930s as an architectural assistant for a borough council and rising steadily through the ranks. His appointment as council architect for the Borough of Camden, in 1964, came at an opportune and exciting moment. In retrospect it can be seen within a larger historical context, the long period of idealism and energy following the end of the Second World War, what some economists call the Trente glorieuses — the three decades during which social goals were leading motivators of public policy. Mark Swenarton’s meticulously compiled book, Cook’s Camden, describes who and how. It reads like 12 books in one." —Bernard Miller, Camden New Journal If you appreciated the last property we featured, you are probably the target audience for the upcoming Cook’s Camden: The Making of Modern Housing by Mark Swenarton. One especially strong contribution to this reevaluation is Cook’s Camden: The Making of Modern Housing, a definitive account, by historian Mark Swenarton, of the radically experimental public housing estates designed and built by Camden Council from 1966 to 1975." — Places Journal

“Part of the canon of modern architecture”

Sydney Cook took up his appointment at Camden — one of the richest yet also most diverse boroughs in London, formed from the merger of Holborn, Hampstead, and St. Pancras — just as the reaction against mixed development was gaining momentum. It was, as Swenarton writes, a heady time, a “period of optimism and ambition in the western world.” See Stefi Orazi, Modernist Estates: The buildings and the people who live in them (London: Frances Lincoln, 2015). The book includes interviews with residents of the Camden estates. Neave Brown, who lived in Fleet Road until his death in January 2018, was one of those interviewed. My mother, Millie Miller, one of Camden’s first councillors in 1964, an admirer of Cook and his work, was then leader of the council. But Cook’s illness was only part of the problem. By the mid 1970s, the U.K. was in the grip of severe recession, and new austerities were being everywhere imposed. Cost reductions eliminated much of the sophistication of Benson and Forsyth’s design. The passage of the Homeless Persons Act, in 1977, was a further complication; the new law required the councils to prioritize the needs of the homeless, which meant that Maiden Lane became home to tenants with complex and pressing requirements. “The result,” writes Swenarton, “was that Maiden Lane soon acquired a reputation as a sink estate.” 9 “Not as the friend but the foe of public good”