Post-war social housing
raised as to the architect’s decision to use scissor section flats 18 (see figure 7). However, Macintosh responds that this was to ensure that each living room was equidistant from the front door and could be south-facing to maximize natural light into what she considered to be the central area of the dwelling. As with every social housing project, Right-to- Buy affected Dawson’s Heights. It gave residents the ability to buy their homes at a drastically reduced price in order to boost the number of owner- occupiers. At present, approximately 30% of residents in the estate are owner-occupiers, with the remaining 70% being tenants of the housing association (Macintosh, 2020). The introduction of Right- to-Buy reduced the number of homes the housing association could offer to the community, and also ushered in the concept of buy-to-let, which undermined one of the original goals of the development. However, Macintosh suggests that a mixture of tenures is beneficial to the community overall, and that a monoculture of any one kind of tenant is detrimental. The architect believes that the current makeup is a ‘ healthy proportion ’ for the success of the development (Macintosh, 2020).
The Decline
While the Corbusian model proved to be effective in Marseille, as well as in south London, in Alton West, this was no guarantee that it could be replicated to the same level of success across the city. Following a Conservative government coming to power in 1951, housing policy changed to focus on slum clearance. In south London, this meant the demolition of Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses that were considered squalid and, in their place, the construction of new, modernist estates (McInnes, 2019). It is important to note that, to the residents of inner-city slums, these new developments provided drastically better living conditions; the space standards were much better, therewas clean runningwater and insulation, amongst other improvements. However, when exploring in greater depth how the construction of these new estates was carried out, issues begin to become apparent. The central concept of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse is that the slab blocks are surrounded by an abundance of green space. This is essential to the standard of living within the blocks as it provides a connection with nature and the environment. In an inner city setting, on cleared land, this is harder to reproduce. Indeed, Sutcliffe (2006) points out that the estates built on this land were ‘ more adventurous ’ , but ingenuity could not replace nature or its benefits. Moreover, as mentioned earlier (see section 3.3), there are practical problems with the implementation of modernist designs (especially of the Corbusian variety) in south London. The climate is different to that which the French architect anticipated with his original design, and as a result so too is the living experience. Furthermore, many of the new estates built were in neutral tones – usually white or grey – which when combined with an overcast sky appears drab and uninspiring. The more successful developments (for instance Dawson’s Heights) 19 adapted the core principles of modernism to suit them for the London environment.
As well as adapting to the climate, successful modernist estates were designed to relate to the existing built environment. However, this was often not the case and the stark differentiation between new and existing caused tension in communities (McInnes, 2019). In his review of architect Rosemary
18 A systemwhereby the space in a building is maximized for apartments and the number of entrance corridors is minimized. This was often used to limit the number of lift-stops required, as the number of stops a lift needed had an impact on the price of the lift (McInnes, 2019). 19 Built from yellow London brick.
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