All articles about london

Herne Hill Peabody Estate

In 1862, American banker and philanthropist George Peabody, who worked in London, established a trust with the aim of improving the living conditions of London’s poor. The trustees…

Thamesmead

In the mid-1960s, the Greater London Council (GLC) initiated the setup of a programme and design of a New Town for no less than 60,000 people in East London: Thamesmead. After the…
Waterlow Court

Waterlow Court

The English Arts and Crafts movement modelled itself on an idealized view of society in pre-industrial England. Its adherents were inspired by buildings from this period to develop…

The Barbican, City of London

A detailed account of how the Barbican, one of the largest housing enclaves in London, came into being. How architectural viewpoints, engineering challenges, power structures, political considerations and pure chance resulted in an extraordinary project.

Streets in the Air

History of the conception, construction and virtually total demolition of the Adelphi, on the banks of the Thames. The daring venture, with its wharf cellars and exceptionally high housing density, epresented a typological revolution in eighteenth-century London. But the project nearly ruined its architects.

Barbican

The large-scale destruction wreaked by the Second World War in London’s financial heart, the City of London, was responsible for intensifying the population decrease that had…

Corringham

Efficiency through Complexity When Frank Lloyd Wright visited London County Hall in the 1950s, he was introduced to what was then the world’s largest housing body. In 1956,…

Mansion Flats and Middle-Class living

Taking the famous Albert Hall Mansions apartment complex as case in point, this essay describes and analyses a new typology in nineteenth-century metropolitan London, paying special attention to the relation between architectural aspects and a new housing culture.

Albert Hall Mansions

Albert Hall Mansions, directly adjacent to the Royal Albert Hall in the exclusive London neighbourhood Knightsbridge, consists of three blocks of luxury apartments. They were designed…