Single Aspect Blog

Alexandra Road – interior

September 19th, 2011

UPDATE 19th March 2018: How I wish I had taken those photographs from 5’6″ and not 6′. Here’s a tip, if you’re photographing interiors and you’re tall, lower the camera.

The owner kindly opened her original and attractive dual aspect flat to the public for a day. Beautiful and well appointed 1970s flat flooded with light, lots of wood on display, large windows, intelligent use of sliding screens to separate kitchen / diner from living room (architect Neave Brown).

Outside space in form of large balcony / patio area. Communal heating by way of pipes in walls on for winter to provide background heat. I thoroughly enjoyed the visit and would happily live there.

It’s interesting to compare this flat built thirty five years ago with the modern equivalents which suffer from small windows, single aspect by design, no separate kitchen, no means of separating off the kitchen with any form of partition, limited or no storage space.

This flat has none of those design flaws, it is dual aspect, has cupboard space, large windows, open plan or separate kitchen/diner as required, and a large outside space on which four people might sit around a table.

More photographs on Flickr -> Alexandra Road – interior

There was a newspaper article about Alexandra Road on the dining table for visitors to read which I photographed and reproduce here at risk of incurring the wrath of the Sunday Times:-

Estates of grace and favour

Left hand page

Right hand page

Is it merely a coincidence that the post-war housing experiment appears to have succeeded in Hampstead, Bloomsbury and Pimlico, and to have failed – even when well-designed – in poorer areas, away from the central London spotlight? If it was unfair to blame architects for all the well documented failures of public sector homes when they were unfashionable, is it not equally unfair to hand them all the glory for the emergeing successes, now that the fashion pendulum is swinging the other way?

Architects and historians in their London enclaves may like to think otherwise, but social circumstances rather than design quality are still what decides whether a building lives or dies.

A timely comment from the end of the article which ties in very well with the ongoing Alice Coleman perspective on public housing as to whether it is the design or the management of an estate that bears most responsibility for its failure or success.

Update: See also Alexandra Road Camden

Update: The following photographs were taken by the owner of the flat.