Modernism of Notting Hill
Are you all ready for some more hot modernist action?
Modernism of Notting Hill
Heading north from some of the buildings I gawped at last weekend, I looked at… some more buildings! Strap yourself in, this is going to be a thrill ride.
When Jarvis Cocker sang “Your Ladbroke Grove looks turn me on… yeah” in Pulp’s class-revenge-via-shagging classic I Spy, no doubt he was thinking of this building. Right? Right? No skillfully avoiding the dog turd outside the corner shop necessary here, just wander down the slope to beautifully maintained 30s Modernism.
This elegant block was designed by Edwin Maxwell Fry in collaboration with Herr Bauhaus himself, Walter Gropius. Grade II listed, and with a penthouse flat taking up the entirety of the top level, this would be a wonderful place to live if it wasn’t for the traffic out front. I could imagine Poirot living here, and I can offer no higher praise.
From pre-war, private modernism, to postwar social housing, we pootle down the hill and under the Westway to St Mark’s Road housing estate.
This was constructed in the late seventies but has an early eighties, Canary Wharf / DLR vibe to it, with its blue paint scheme and funky angular design. You can clearly see that this was build in reaction to the monolithic, often Brutalist housing estates of the sixties and early seventies, and also to compliment the neighbouring Georgian terraces.
But I don’t think it quite works: the design is too twee, and by aping what came before it just draws attention to its own inadequecies. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, is it’s best not to draw attention to your own inadequecies.
Cycling back to Ladbroke Grove, and on a corner between the railway and a desolate Sainsbury’s car park, we find Kensal House.
Completed in 1937, it was the first Modernist housing block in the UK to be built specifically for the working class. The history of the block is interesting: it was constructed on a former gas works and financed by the (semi-public) Gas, Light and Coke Company (GLCC, as the company thought social housing would make them look all modern and progressive in an era when its business was seriously under threat from the rise of electricity.
Imagine Amazon or Google funding social housing to make themselves a little bit less evil! Actually, best not. That sounds like a terrible idea.
Kensal House is still social housing, and houses a fantastic theatre company offering free classes for local kids. With the skeleton of Grenfell Tower(1.) still dominating the skyline, it’s an important reminder that this remains a genuine working class area, despite the classwashed place Notting Hill has in the public imagination due to Richard Curtis films and the like.
We finish with further, later slum clearance, with the double-whammy of Holmefield House and the Cheltenham Estate.
The former isn’t looking its best, despite an eighties makeover and paint-job. Constructed in 1965, curving gently towards the canal, and with a courtyard garden at its heart, Holmefield House looks distinctly unloved in the shadow of its famous neighbour.
For here we have Trellick Tower. The Grade II* listed work, famously, of Ernö Goldfinger and now available in tea-towel, paper model, and postcard form, this Brutalist edifice still has the power to inspire awe, and has so far escaped the fate of its less famous twin, the Balfron Tower in Poplar, which had all its working class residents “decanted” from it several years ago.
I have mixed feelings about Trellick Tower, which are mostly about how it only started receiving the care, maintenence and attention it deserved once its flats started getting sold privately in the wake of Thatcher’s Right To Buy. But along with the Barbican, it’s a reminder that buildings themselves have an inherent social value, no matter what commentators writing about “sink estates” will tell you.
While so many aspects of postwar housing has aged badly - removing people from cars and pollution was a noble thought, but we really should have thought more about removing the cars and pollution - so many work as well now as they did when they were first conceived. I hope to see Trellick from the train to Bristol for many more decades to come.
(1). Tastefully covered now, just as it was covered with flammable cladding to make it more palatable to wealthier neighbours
Links and plugs
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I am swimming two miles in the Serpentine in late September for Alzheimer’s Society, in memory of my awesome Grandma, Carmel Walsh, who died last month. Please give generously: I have given myself an absurdly ambitious fundraising target.
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Next Level Sketch, the sketch comedy night I co-produce, returns tomorrow night (Tuesday 29th June) for some more socially distanced hilarity at Hoopla Impro in London Bridge. The Free Mondays are our special guests and they are very funny, as are we. Come along, only a few tickets left!
- Factually Inaccurate, the funny lecture related stand up night I host, returns on Monday 12th July, also at Hoopla Impro. We have an incredible line up: Yuriko Kotani! MJ Hibbett!! Luke Rollason!!! Other people who are funny! Me!!!! Would love to see some of you there.