Modernist Estates: The buildings and the people who live in them

Product Information

Modernist Estates provides an inside look at remarkable and sometimes controversial estates in Britain and the impact they have on their communities. Featuring twenty-one modernist homes and their residents, including the Barbican, Isokon, Balfron Tower and Park Hill, it presents an overview of the building, architect, historical and political context. It explores, with fascinating interviews and contemporary photography, what it’s like to live on a modernist estate today. With its striking stepped-concrete terraces, the Alexandra & Ainsworth Estate is the most famous of the social housing schemes built during Camden’s “golden age” in the 1960s and 1970s. Rowley Way was built between 1972-78 by the revered Modernist architect Neave Brown and has been given a rate Grade II* listing by English Heritage in recognition of its architectural significance. It doesn’t take an imaginative leap to grasp that Bauhaus was at least as revolutionary as republicanism in 1919. The old town is staid and stately: 12 of its mainly baroque buildings are Unesco-listed as “Classical Weimar”. Less than 15 minutes’ walk away is the Haus am Horn – a pioneering “white cube” that hosted the first Bauhaus exhibition, in 1923. Squat and flat-walled, sober verging on drab, this “test house” has its own Unesco listing. Sumptuous photographs and interesting accompanying text about the many modernist estates in Britain. The lower end of the market always sells so well,” says Hill. “One of the founding principles was: it’s not about price, it really is about design, and we’ve always tried to keep as broad a price spectrum as we can.”

Sprowston Mews II → Modernist Estates Sprowston Mews II → Modernist Estates

By and large the interiors have a hipster-ish vibe to them, and unsurprisingly Shoreditch gets a few mentions, along with Bethnal Green and Barbican etc, and every other person seems to be an architect or graphic designer, so this is very much a glimpse at how the other half live. Most of the interiors have a clinical yet relaxed and liveable feel, but for all the middle-class, Guardian-reading vibes, many of the locations’ best days are behind them, and author Stefi Orazi doesn’t shy away from admitting this. An impressive two-bedroom duplex apartment in a unique mews in Forest Gate. The building, completed in 2019, was designed by Marcus Lee, formerly a director at the Richard Rogers Partnership, and comprises a studio apartment on the ground floor and this duplex on the top two floors, complete with its own roof terrace. Before buying our current flat on the 18th floor, my now-husband and I rented a flat on the third floor. That’s how much we loved the building – we knew we wanted to buy here. The construction (from 1959) is less robust than what we were used to in the Barbican Estate and sound thermal insulation is less than ideal. It would be hard to improve either of those as the pivoting Crittal windows mean that secondary glazing is problematic. We designed and installed a glass screen between the kitchen and living room as someone before us widened the original opening and we wanted to enclose the kitchen but also make sure it looked visually open.Leaving a comfortable job in graphic design to become a freelance illustrator, with Meredith Schomburg

Modern House | Selling the UK’s most inspiring living spaces The Modern House | Selling the UK’s most inspiring living spaces

There are three distinct parts to each ‘chapter’ in this book and these can be rated separately as followsCourses, textbooks and materials are free; all you need are internet access and your own desire to learn. We offer links to tutoring & mentoring. Student Resources It’s extraordinary, the rise of interest in these homes,” says John Grindrod, author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain. “I think Grand Designs has had a bit to do with it, and I think it’s partly a reaction against developers’ houses of the 80s and 90s – heritage design, fake Tudor, with small rooms and small windows. Instead, these houses are open, with entire glazed walls.” The couple moved here in the autumn of 2015, shortly after the birth of their second child, leaving behind their two-bedroom flat with cantilevered stairs on the Golden Lane estate in London. “It was tiny,” says Bella. “Our living space was the size of what is now our playroom. And that was fine when we had one child. But then we were hankering after more space, and this place came up …” The guides all follow the same format: a cover illustration, a map, a few photographs and text with the route and history of the buildings,” says Orazi. “I make a list of interesting houses in an area, and then work out a good walking route. I walk it several times, to make sure it feels the right length. I also get friends to to road test them. I then write the text, send it to the copy editor, brief Jay on the cover illustration and then put them together and send to print.” Dance in Glass, by Oskar Schlemme, at the new Bauhaus Museum Dessau. Photograph: Ronny Hartmann/Getty Images

Modernist Estates: The buildings and the people who live in

This book would certainly be of interest to architecture buffs, as well as people interested in engineering, urban planning, and postwar English history, but I think almost anyone could appreciate the gorgeous pictures and unique look at a distinct time in modern history. In 2010, as Laurent was walking in Courbevoie, he discovered a tiny little street where he felt time had stopped for 50 years. "The place was surreal. I befriended a couple of old people and started to photograph them. Their traditional garden offered a stark contrast with the surrounding skyline of towers, bringing together two different eras, two different living styles."Many people go to Berlin to eat sausages, drink lager and gawp at what’s left of the Wall. They might add on a trip to related exhibitions portraying life in the DDR or the Spy Museum. Bauhaus, by contrast, is not merely a past movement; it is a force in the present day, offering nuanced insights into German life and art. In art books, modernism is usually presented as rootless, but much of what we now think of as new has its roots in Dessau and Weimar. But for the older locals who live there, these ambitious yet dated modernist buildings are what they call home and have been for most of their lives. Photographer Laurent Kronental was so moved by the living conditions of the Ensembles, he wanted to shed light on their older residents, people who are sometimes regarded as a forgotten generation.