Having focussed our work last year on New London Agenda, we started the new panel with a screening of “the White Flats” film about the Highgate New Town estate in North London, designed by Peter Tábori and Ken Adie for the London Borough of Camden when they were only 28 years old. This film was entirely made by residents of the estate, and explores the lived experience of all ages and generations. As one resident put it, the estate represents ‘a fault line in the history of housing’, this first phase being completed in 1979 just as the Right to Buy policy was brought in by Margaret Thatcher, and the funding of social housing across the UK would change forever. Its architecture has facilitated an extraordinary sense of community which has intensified, rather than weakened, over time and this film explores how and why this has happened. Following the screening, we discussed what we can learn from this today, when the pressure to build more housing, for less, is greater than ever.
The film and the subsequent discussion led us to examine the reflections and experiences of different communities through two site visits. The first was to Acton Gardens, a regeneration project led by L&Q and Countryside/Vistry over the past 14 years in South Acton. This visit was chosen to explore both the challenges and achievements of this type of phased, large scale regeneration from the residents’ perspective – particularly fascinating as this project has several more phases of new housing to come. The discussion with the client team, based in the community, was broad and far reaching. Interestingly they have also commissioned a detailed longitudinal study of residents’ experiences and feedback, which is due to be completed by Christmas. We also met the key community representative who has been involved in the steering group since the outset, who shared her insight into aspects of the regeneration from the resident perspective and described how the perception of the original estate, its safety and sense of community was very different from the reality. The second visit, to Somers Town, a neighbourhood with a rich history of social housing from slum clearance in the 1930s through to Camden’s redevelopment today, focussed on a group of residents living in homes across the neighbourhood, and the Peoples’ Museum, a social enterprise and extraordinary focus of activism and campaigning, set up to celebrate Somers Town’s unique past and struggles today, with the threat of denser redevelopment and HS2 on the doorstep.
Both visits, with reflections to be published shortly by the NLA, highlight the power and value of these conversations and the insight they need to bring into the design and development of housing today.
Looking ahead, the new panel will continue these visits, drawing in the resident voice and building on these insights and research, with other panels to enrich and broaden the process. We are also supporting the Architects’ Action for Affordable Housing campaign, and specifically looking at the waste in the industry (time, cost and material) and how this can be better channelled into the delivery of new and retrofitted affordable homes.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to these valuable sessions and visits this year, and I look forward to welcoming the new panel members in 2025.
