Cook's Camden: The Making of Modern Housing reconstructs how a single borough architect and a team of talented collaborators produced what are widely regarded as the most important urban housing schemes built in the UK over the past century.
About This Book
When Sydney Cook was appointed borough architect of Camden, he assembled some of the sharpest architectural minds working in London and set them a problem that had defeated most of postwar Britain: how to build at density without building high. The schemes that resulted — Alexandra Road, Branch Hill, Fleet Road, Highgate New Town, Maiden Lane — rejected the tower block in favour of a street-based urbanism, one that gave residents front doors and a relationship to the city rather than an escape from it. Mark Swenarton examines how this model was conceived and realised, and why it continues to matter to architects and urban housing designers today. New colour photography sits alongside original black-and-white images to document the buildings, the interiors, and the people who still live in them.
Key Features
- 328 pages of critical text, new colour photography, and original black-and-white documentary photography
- Named projects include Alexandra Road, Branch Hill, Fleet Road, Highgate New Town, and Maiden Lane
- Published by Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, ISBN 9781848222045
What You'll Discover
- How the Camden architects achieved high-density housing without tower blocks, through a return to street-level front doors and ground-based urbanism
- The working methods of Sydney Cook and his recruited team, and how their collaborative approach shaped the character of each scheme
- The way Camden's housing integrated with its physical and cultural context rather than imposing a clean-break modernism upon it
- A then-and-now photographic portrait of the buildings and their residents, measuring the lived experience of these schemes across decades
About the Author
Mark Swenarton is an architectural historian with a focus on housing and the modern movement in Britain. His work examines the social, political, and design conditions that shaped twentieth-century architecture.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 328
- Dimensions: 210 x 260 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781848222045
- Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and urban designers working on housing, historians of the modern movement, students of social housing and urban density, and anyone with a serious interest in how British cities were remade in the postwar era.