Cook's Camden: The Making of Modern Housing

by Mark Swenarton

The housing projects built in Camden in the 1960s and 1970s when Sydney Cook was borough architect are widely regarded as the most important urban housing built in the UK in the past 100 years. The schemes – which included Alexandra Road, Branch Hill, Fleet Road, Highgate New Town and Maiden Lane – set out a model of street-based housing that continues to command interest and admiration from architects to this day. Cook recruited some of the brightest talent available in London at the time, including Neave Brown, Benson & Forsyth and Peter Tábori, and also commissioned up-andcoming practices such as Colquhoun & Miller, Edward Cullinan and Farrell Grimshaw. The Camden projects represented a new type of urban housing based on a return to streets with front doors. In place of tower blocks, the Camden architects showed how the required densities could be achieved without building high, creating a new kind of urbanism that integrated with, rather than broke from, its cultural and physical context. This book examines how Cook and his team created this new kind of street-based housing, what it comprised, and what lessons it offers for today. New colour photographs by Tim Crocker combine with the original black and white photography by Martin Charles to give a fascinating 'then and now' portrayal not just of the buildings but also of the homes within and the people who live there.

Genres: Architecture

328 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

A specialist in the architecture of housing in twentieth century Britain and on the relationship between architecture, housing and politics during that era, Mark Swenarton FRHistS, FRSA, HonFRIBA, is Emeritus Professor of Architecture Architecture at Liverpool University.

Reviews

[Rupert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well it’s about my grandfather and his team at Camden. Great book, but I am biased

[Stephanie Mathivet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book as I lived on Rowley Way, Ainsworth Estate for almost 20 years in the 80s/90s. I loved the architectural style and how that created a way of living in a building. Just started reading with regard to the progressive housing policies that LB Camden adopted with their team of creative socialist architects and planners. Certainly now you can see the weaknesses in this style of housing especially the lack of energy efficiency- on a cold day you could see a heat haze coming off the flats - and that the estate was expensive to upkeep so in times of austerity the grounds especially went downhill. It was unfortunate that the estate was used a lot for filming working class dirges portraying fictional residents in such negative light. I used to feel sorry for the postmen who had to climb every flight of stairs on their rounds. They had to be fit! A detail the architects overlooked perhaps.