History
The Alexandra Road estate, properly known as the Alexandra and Ainsworth estate, is a housing estate in the London Borough of Camden, North West London, England. It was designed in 1968 by Neave Brown of Camden Council's Architects Department. Construction work commenced in 1972 and was completed in 1978. It is constructed from site-cast, board-marked white, unpainted reinforced concrete. Which is similar to that of the National Theatre within the finish of the concrete throughout the site. The site has 520 apartments, and also includes a school, community centre, youth club, heating complex, and parkland. I feel that when the site was designed it takes features from that of both the Barbican Centre and that of other buildings from the Brutalism Movement to encompass this site that is truly unique within the city and is considered by some as the mini utopia that was created by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. “… Low construction, to fill the site with geometric definitions of open space, to integrate. And to return to the traditional quality housing thing continuous, anonymous, cellular, repetitive background, which has always been his virtue… “(Neave Brown) Sites such as this have always been seeking an alternative to the High Rises that is becoming more of a common site throughout the city today and in some way this sets it apart from that of the Barbican Centre.
During October (2017) Brown received the RIBA royal gold medal in recognition of a lifetime’s contribution to advancing architecture. This is the UK’s highest honour for architecture and for it to be awarded. I feel that the award is a timely reminder of those qualities and the scale of our ambitious for everyday housing in the 1960s-70s and the way in which sites such as the Alexandra Road Estate has changed the perspectives of how it could be to live within the city and the way in which a site can encompass all of the facilities that one could desire.
