Comments on: End of an Experiment http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2009/07/07/rosemary-hill/end-of-an-experiment/ The Blog of the London Review of Books Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:00:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Mike http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2009/07/07/rosemary-hill/end-of-an-experiment/comment-page-1/#comment-86 Mike Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:09:39 +0000 http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/?p=1026#comment-86 Thinking a little further as to why they (the architect and Housing Committee) of Camberwell Borough Council didn't undertake those study visits, the following (possibly fantasy) occurs to me... Both Camberwell and Stoke Newington were solidly Labour councils - Paddington was a marginal. Camberwell had a right-wing (and I suspect largely Catholic) Labour Party, the other two left-wing ones - which in the 1950s meant close to the Communist Party. I wonder if that was why they weren't prepared to learn from their comrades north of the river. Were those who died in the fire at Lakanal House the last victims of the Cold War? Thinking a little further as to why they (the architect and Housing Committee) of Camberwell Borough Council didn’t undertake those study visits, the following (possibly fantasy) occurs to me…

Both Camberwell and Stoke Newington were solidly Labour councils – Paddington was a marginal. Camberwell had a right-wing (and I suspect largely Catholic) Labour Party, the other two left-wing ones – which in the 1950s meant close to the Communist Party.

I wonder if that was why they weren’t prepared to learn from their comrades north of the river. Were those who died in the fire at Lakanal House the last victims of the Cold War?

]]> By:  Mike http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2009/07/07/rosemary-hill/end-of-an-experiment/comment-page-1/#comment-85  Mike Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:53:03 +0000 http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/?p=1026#comment-85 The design of Lakanal House "should not be blamed too hastily on anyone, even its architect" thinks Ms Hill. Presumably she doesn't see why the Housing Committee of the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell (not Southwark) should have bothered to make a study visit either to Stoke Newington, where the local Council provided high density social housing without resorting to high rise construction, or to Paddington where the block I live in, nine stories high, has three staircases, one in the middle and one at each end. The estate - Hallfield - was deisgned by Denys Lasdun and was largely responsible for his winning the contract to design the South Bank complex. I certainly feel a little bad about it myself, since I wrote Southwark Council's housing capital programme bids for three years in the 1980s and never bothered my head about which of its larger blocks were firetraps and which weren't. The design of Lakanal House “should not be blamed too hastily on anyone, even its architect” thinks Ms Hill. Presumably she doesn’t see why the Housing Committee of the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell (not Southwark) should have bothered to make a study visit either to Stoke Newington, where the local Council provided high density social housing without resorting to high rise construction, or to Paddington where the block I live in, nine stories high, has three staircases, one in the middle and one at each end. The estate – Hallfield – was deisgned by Denys Lasdun and was largely responsible for his winning the contract to design the South Bank complex.

I certainly feel a little bad about it myself, since I wrote Southwark Council’s housing capital programme bids for three years in the 1980s and never bothered my head about which of its larger blocks were firetraps and which weren’t.

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