Post-war social housing
Fig. 6: Dawson’s Heights, seen from a nearby cricket ground (Lambert, 1973)
Fig. 5: Dawson’s Heights, distant view seen from a mile and a half north (Lambert, 1973 )
Fig. 7: A cross section of Dawson’s Heights, displaying the scissor section design (Jordan, 2018): a system whereby the space in a building is maximized for apartments and the number of entrance corridors is minimized. (McInnes, 2019).
Macintosh accepts the need for integration with the existing architecture but rejects the concept that new developments should be imitative.
Dawson’s Heights has benefitted from being well managed since its construction; first by Southwark Council and then by the Southern Housing Group (a charitable housing association). As a result, the condition of the building has not deteriorated over time. At the time of its opening, the development was criticized by architects as the philosophy of the time was changing away from totalitarian megastructures. Instead, the focus was on low rise, low density housing. In the Architectural Journal, fellow modernist architect Richard Padovan criticize d the inflexibility of the individual dwellings’ interiors, highlighting the excessive number of structural walls (Macintosh, 2020). Questions were also
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