Oakshott Court

The area behind the railway stations of King's Cross, St Pancras and Euston has been built up and destroyed a great many times since it was first properly built upon in the early 19th century. In the last few years, the area behind King's Cross, at one point a mass of goods yards, canals, factory buildings and other industrial detritus, has been receiving a high-speed makeover. Central St Martins have already relocated to a huge converted granary building, an odd but compelling mix of art factory and slick modern fit-out, and the area between is being built on rapidly. Blocks of new yuppie flats with a welcome dash of inter-war New York detailing look over a series of huge education and media buildings. The Francis Crick institute, architecturally remarkable only for its size, is having its skin attached as I write, and Google are currently revising plans for an absolutely gargantuan office block as well.

Behind Euston still feels quite neglected; it's quiet, not much 'active frontage' here, and the shops that are there are not upmarket - caffs, old fashioned newsagents, etc. But there are some surprising architectural moments that are worth looking at, one of which I visited a few days ago, in a break from reading 1970s eco-apocalypse books in the British Library around the corner.

But first, a quick glance at the Sidney Street Estate; a flash of European modernity dropped into London in the early 1930s, most highly influenced by the flats of 'Red Vienna'. Large courtyards accommodating community facilities are now securely gated off, blocked to outsiders.

But the main destination, yet again, is a Sidney Cook estate for Camden Council from the 1970s. Around the side of the Cock Tavern were a number of grey haired Irishmen, out for a cigarette break from their lunchtime pints. The price of alcohol, always a notable nightmare in London, has become ludicrous recently; it seems to be debated whether this is a major cause of the decline in pubs across the UK, but in this period of general decline it is becoming harder and harder to enjoy a pint which leaves you with pennies back from a fiver (speaking of which, for some reason I still remember a scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, c.1980 wherein a character buys eight pints and peanuts, telling the barman to keep the change. "From a fiver?" he splutters; "thank you very much!!!" - even adjusting for inflation prices have still more than doubled...)

Anyway... the site is angled slightly off-cardinal, perhaps 30 degrees. The north-north-west and east-north-east sides of Oakshott court are presented as long, fairly blank, and small windowed. Doors open at the ground floor, and the upper floors cantilever over, in an obvious sign of the stepped-section so beloved of Camden Brutalists, which first appears in a Walter Gropius design of 1928 for a 'Wohnberg'; a 'residential-mountain', before appearing here and there in Corbu and others, before becoming a mainstay of Team X and their affiliates.

Meditation centres are D1 use class, apparently. Get yourself a Biglife.

The Pevsner guide to North London claims that Oakshott Court has 'forbiddingly overbearing rear parts.' I disagree; I find their sturdy regularity to be restrained and rhythmical. Unfortunately, it has to be admitted that the Pevsner guides from the last two decades are pretty poor when it comes to recognising the architectural merit of modernist housing. For every system-built block whose horrors they correctly bemoan, they also indulge in quite scattershot anti-modernist slanders; 'inhumane' etc etc. It's not bad scholarship, it's just a sign of how completely the critical landscape had changed by the 80s and into the 90s. Now, thanks to exhibitions, books, and a new generation of critics, as well as the panacea of sufficient historical distance, not to mention the deterioration of housing politics in this country, we are far better able to point out the merits of architecture like this, and hopefully in future editions of the guide we will see this rectified.

 Oh hello...

What's this? Not something I've seen before on a Camden Estate, this odd drum form. It derives from a kind of Mendellsohn-ish modernism, perhaps even Art Deco, but also might be a reference to some Constructivist and Futurist examples of the idea. I hate to use the word but this is a most definitely 'dynamic' form. It's interesting because it only seems to serve the flats directly connected to it, which would seem to betray its prominence, but then we might see it as an outward gesture as well, providing a satisfyingly proud hinge around which the facades can bend.

In fact it's really rather odd that the rear facades would be described as 'forbidding', considering how in keeping they are with the existing buildings on the other side of the road; London County Council flats built 50 years before Oakshott Court. There are clear formal parallels in the linearity, the regularity, the simple grid broken only by horizontal bands and vertical pipework.

The facades terminate blankly, although this blankness actually works to convey the sectional conceit, almost as a diagram.

Spot the estate map; as so often, it functions as a basic diagram of the architectural conceit.

From the southerly corner of the complex, it all begins to make sense. The tower that hinged the two facades together at the outside is clearly the most prominent point from the other direction; from it, two wings of stepped section flats stretch out across the site, with a green space completing the square plot.

The first row of flats are sunk into the ground about 3m or so. They are maisonettes; entered from the upper level and then with a small garden to the front.

Various walkways wrap around the L-shaped block; this is at ground level, and provides entrance into the lower maisonettes (with their little plant boxes) and the lower level of the next set of flats above.

It was one of those autumn days; sharply cold, partially clouded; where the light can change from a dusty grey, shadowless and plain, to boldly shadowed, where everything is picked out in either a wan gold or a pale blue, depending on whether the low sun is occluded or not.

Communal facilities; a bench, wrapped around some planting. Who knows; perhaps in summer elderly residents park themselves here as their dogs run around the green spaces, perhaps teenagers sit around getting stoned, or perhaps, like this day, in the stingingly dry cold, it sits empty at all times.

Running up the diagonal are a series of steps which take you between the different deck-access levels. As a passed this point, I jumped as there was a young man (wearing a work uniform I might add) sitting on the steps to the right, supping on a lunchtime can of strong lager. Startled, I carried on upwards, using the other staircase. Not exactly an ideal sense of public space and safety.

You can see here that the flats have clerestory windows in the roof above them, bringing light into the deeper, more northerly spaces in each flat. At a very simple level, it's little touches like this which elevate the work Cook's Camden above other housing architecture; attempts to bring in architectural features which would genuinely improve the experience of living in a not particularly large property. That this all occurred in the aftermath of the oil crisis, amid a context of collapsing contractors and sky-ward construction costs is not the damnation some think it is.

The flats with ground level entrance are the friendliest on the site; they are the ones whose inhabitants have spent the most effort on cultivating their small private gardens, they are the ones where the buildings feel at their smallest. There is something very intimate about the scale at this point, even without masking its communality.

It seems that Mary Wollstonecraft once lived in a building on this site; although its unlikely that she lived in the Somers Town Goods Yard, which Pevsner tells us sat on the site before Oakshott Court; just yet more shifting uses around the peripheral railway lands of the 19th century.

The increased scale and stepping up towards the back of the building allows not only for the larger blocks to receive daylight, but also for the vehicular infrastructure that was necessary for any development at that point. A straight road runs through the development at ground level, lined with garages.

Think back to some of the more inept mass-housing blocks, and consider how their entire ground planes were frequently given over to garages, and how against the 'active frontage' orthodoxy that now appears. But then think about other developments, such as the Barbican or Alexandra Road, and how cars are virtually invisible there, tucked into the basement, leaving a fully pedestrianised ground level above. Then recall Highgate New Town, and how the laying off of the car park attendants created a perfectly hidden landscape for trouble, leading to the permanent sealing off of the parking garages.

Not so subtle messages hint at the fear of young people, the fear of anti-social behaviour.

I mentioned Highgate New Town before, one of the most exciting and accomplished developments by Cook's Camden. The architect for that development was Peter Tabori, who remarkably was hired by the council to build his diploma project. Tabori was also the architect of this slightly later scheme, and if you didn't know already, the obvious similarities might have alerted you to that fact.

Where Highgate New Town is mainly built from a combination of pre-cast concrete and breeze-blocks, Oakshott Court takes the same sectional principle and repeats it with brick as the main material. Also, where the earlier project makes total use of the generous slope of the site, here Tabori deserves credit for being able to artificially conjure up a similar set of steps. It appears also that the budget was clipped more successfully here; the stairwells might be very similar, but in the earlier scheme they are blessed with glazed rooflights above the doorways, providing shelter for getting home with your shopping, wheres here they are far more spartan.

A lovely lady and a grumpy man live here.

The more tightly packed blocks of Oakshott Court also mean that the expansive, bucolic character of Highgate New Town, tumbling down through mature trees, is lost in this scheme. It's definitely a little more hard-edged, with the liquid-applied roof and the underwhelming levels of planting. It's also a little more dense at this higher level as well. Still; if the interiors are anything like the ones further up the road, then the inhabitants here are blessed with excellently planned flats.

• CCTV cameras to be installed on the estate and response to anti-social behaviour.

(and yours truly in the reflection)

The internet isn't particularly useful in trying to find out about any other works that Tabori completed; in Pevsner North London he's given as the architect of just the two schemes that I've mentioned here. I'd be grateful if anyone knows of further information on other projects that he worked on subsequently. 

Concrete and Longing

I'm literally running out of London avant-garde council estates to visit now; I've probably been past most of them, and after this post I'll have written something about all but one of the classic Camden estates. Indeed, in the picture above, here I am at Stoneleigh Terrace, on one of the ever-more sodden days we live through, off to see a two bedroom flat on Open House weekend.

Apparently a rather famous young architect lives round here, and occasionally shows their flat off, but they weren't doing so this time. The flat that was being shown was just lovely though, almost calculated  to instill florid envy, with its complete set of Pevsners, its upright pianos, its stacks of vinyl (Schoenberg on the top!), and it felt beautifully cosy to sit and look out through the dark stained timber windows at the torrential rain, so close and yet so distanced. Sigh...

A couple of new interesting things were learned though; the majority of the tenants of Highgate New Town are still local authority, which is very heartening to hear. Secondly, I had never noticed the clever detailing at the cemetery end of the estate, with large open picture windows looking across the graveyard, a delectably romantic touch.

Less welcome was finding out that a large underground car park beneath the buildings is completely blocked off: one of the casualties of the 70s oil and financial crises that so effected the construction of the estate was the cutting of caretaker staff, which meant there was nobody to stop the drug-taking and fire-setting that went on down underground. Eventually the council's response was to just block it off.

Now, if I were running a unit in one of the weird and wonderful architecture schools in and around this fair city, I can hardly think of a more interesting site for a project than a large unwanted underground space underneath an experimental modernist housing estate next to a very large and very famous cemetery. That is, if the students were interested in creatively wrestling with the overlaps between romanticism, high-modernism, socialism and decline that it inevitably suggests.

But anyway, I'm getting a little carried away there. Not long ago I found myself heading towards Alexandra Road, another Camden council estate, perhaps the best known one, and one where I had previously visited a flat as part of open house weekend a few years ago. But if you approach from the north, before you reach the estate there's actually another example of modernist housing that you pass by, complete with raised walkways!

As usual, it's worth quoting the Pevsner guide in full on this one:

... the ABBEY ESTATE, planned in the early 1960s by Austin-Smith, Salmon, Lord Partnership for Hampstead Borough Council, but not built until 1965. It consists of an ungainly group of three coarsely detailed twenty-storey towers, a grossly ugly multi-storey car park and a pair of eight-storey slabs...

... They are awkwardly linked by bridges across Abbey Road and Belsize Road, a half-hearted demonstration of the 1960s concern with pedestrian segregation, for the convenience of the traffic clearly comes first...

 ... Slabs and car park have unrelenting horizontal aggregate-faced concrete bands to their upper floors. Shops, a health centre and a community centre (refurbished 1991 by Neil Thomson Associates) provide a little relief at ground level. 

 

Personally, I think that is more than a little harsh - the slab blocks here have got quite a few nice things going for them, the aggregate is actually rather golden and warm, and there is more than a little drama in the massing of the staircases and communal functions. The slabs also look out at each other rather than over the busy road, and last but not least, there is a piano shop in one of the commercial premises.

But of course, the star of the show is obviously Alexandra Road, the most dramatic re-interpretation of the classic high-density working class terrace in London for sure, perhaps in the world, perhaps.

Super-dense, arranged around a long curve of the railway line out of Euston, with most buildings facing into a pedestrian street, it once again banishes cars to a lower level.

But the section, oh! The section! The ground floor flats have a balcony that sits just about a meter and a half from the pavement, yet is separated from it by a moat, a sheer drop to the car park. This creates a wonderful proximate but 'safe' feeling; a resident on their balcony can feel safe from strange passers-by, but can also provide a sense of sight, of presence on the public street itself, in that Smithsons / Jacobs-ian fashion. Further flats are stacked up backwards each with a balcony, stepping back partly to increase light, partly to mitigate bulk, and partly for the sheer bloody joy of it.

How's this for a funny bit of detailing? A spot of concrete repair where the artiste has scratched faux-wood grains into their work.

Early photos of the estate show it clean, and crisp. Obviously over the years the concrete has gotten much older, although it's still quite obviously of a better grade than in many places. The balconies have all grown up as well, plants are everywhere, and many of the communal planting areas have tropical plants in them, giving a distinctly mediterranean feel to the place.   

The little cat you see there was very friendly. Up it came to say hello, cautiously sniffing before demanding its chin be tickled. As I crouched down towards it, it even decided to jump up onto my lap as if I was on a sofa, rubbing its face deep into the sleeve of my jumper, before becoming distracted by a passing pigeon and bounding off to ineffectually stalk its quarry.  

And all the while you could hear the bouncing sound of some turn of the millenium UK 2-step music, all skittish off-beat drums and lolloping bass. It was difficult to tell where it was coming from, presumably it was one of the flats, but no, eventually it became clear that someone was down in the basement car-park having a little rave to themselves.

This estate is also still mostly inhabited by local authority tenants, the lucky bastards!

And, to be honest, it's been a while since I've been in a place that had such a mix of Londoners. I've been here for the best part of a decade now, and have always lived in the East, in a few different locations, although my god! you'd think it was actually called 'Huckneigh', the sheer saturation of home counties accents you hear there now: shut your eyes and you could be walking through the beautiful limestone market town of Preening Shitbury, but anyway... 

... while I was there I saw a couple of hipsters, a few old fashioned geezers, some muslim families, various other families of all different backgrounds, some elegant elderly types. The point is not some facile multicultural one, more a multi-class one. There were people who were obviously of very different economic milieu, but they all had a bloody great place to live, whether they were on social rent, had exercised the right-to-buy, or were renting off some buy-to-let creep or whatever. It's not full communism but it's far better than where I am now, and far better than most places. It felt like what London ought to be about.

And to be honest, it's not even really about the dramatic design, but about various lovely details, such as the sliding partitions at the kitchens, the full-height doors creating genuine spatial variety, the intimacy achieved even at such density. Look at the balconies there; there's built in planting there; you could grow all your herbs, some veg, it's just such a nice little touch, something you just can't do in 'traditional' housing unless you've got a garden, but here it's built into every single flat. It's just well-designed. 

And unlike many housing estates, you can still have access to the upper floors here. I wonder if people have asked for them to be closed off; nobody cared that I was up there for a while, and everywhere public is so visible that I can't imagine there being a great vulnerability to hiding, sneaking and pouncing up there.

Here you see the smaller of the two main rows of blocks, which are just two maisonettes deep. From here you could see a number of cats lounging around on the roof, confronting each other, balancing along the concrete panels. It's also clear just how 'seen' the main street is, how closely watched the public space is, and what with its regular benches set into the low walls, I'm not sure I know many more homely public space in London.

And here, to go back to the question of style, you really get a sense of the drama, the rugged beauty of the composition, the 'architecture' part of the project.

Stretching off, a genuine 1970s megastructure, a single monolithic entity, a massive object yet completely separable into its constituent parts (which themselves are separable). It may not be plastic and plug-in but the logic is most certainly there in spades.

But here's a funny thing. It's true that Alexandra Road went way over-budget, but of course that had an awful lot to do with the collapse of the 1970s leading to bankruptcy for many contractors (even after their free-for-all in the system building scams of the 1960s), and Alexandra Road got bogged down as many other schemes did. I also recall Patrick Keiller talking about his time working for an engineer on this scheme and talking about how the concrete work on site resembled the scene of some kind of trench war, an experience that put him off 'wet trades' in construction to this day. But the real test of a magnificent design of this type, if you are easily blinded by the artistry of the building, is how it copes with its budget being slashed. What you see above are extra units pasted onto the side of the original scheme, built in breeze blocks and standard components, by different architects.

Another of the peripheral buildings, looking ever so romantisch.

But oh!!!

 

There's something funny here; you can see the roads that run under the building to the yard round the back, beside the railway tracks. But look at how narrow the columns are, look at how spartan the grid appears! There's something very very out of joint there, a sense of massive, tottering weight, despite the fact that one understands the principle of the frame. It makes you realise that in contradiction to what I wrote a minute ago, there is a sense of the 'plug-in' to this scheme, there is a feeling that it could keep going in, that you might be able to slide one of the flats out like a bottle from a rack.

 WANT.