Chalcots estate ‘a prime example of how ill-thought-out the design of social flats was’

• IT is hoped that the exhibition curated by Professor Mark Swenarton at Holborn library, based on his book Cook’s Camden: The Life and Work of Architect Sydney Cook, and mentioning Neave Brown during the heyday of Camden social housing construction, is not just a celebration and chest-beating of what wonderful, middle-class, educated, enlightened architects they were and how much good they did for working-class tenants.

Rather it should also be a warning to contemporary architects and social town planners of how wrong they can get it!

Never mind the poor insulation to the 1960s and 1970s social housing, with reference to heating and noise pollution. A prime example of how ill-thought-out the design of social flats was and a far cry from “putting tenants’ needs at the centre of everything architects did” is the Chalcots estate.

Burnham Tower has two playgrounds directly under the 22 floors on the Adelaide Road side. The tenants’ flats, most of which are studios with no children, suffer 24-hour screeching, hollering, and high-pitched shrieking; like being in a car crash every five minutes. Basketballs and footballs crash off mental railings.

Yet most of the children’s parents live on the quiet side of the block on the Fellows Road and have minimum exposure to the noise their children make.

The playgrounds so close to the block make the children targets for the numerous “care in the community” tenants who throw glass and metal cans out of the windows right onto the playgrounds below – often to silence the noise at night, or maim or kill those below.

The flats and the playgrounds beneath are also too close to the 24-hour traffic. The rat-run on the Adelaide Road between Camden and Kilburn causes high pollution not just to children but to the tenants who are forced to keep their windows open, due to the poor ventilation and condensation.

This means the flats suffer exposure to dirt and diesel fumes. Never mind 80 decibels of noise from emergency-service sirens and heavy goods vehicles blowing horns at buses and cars that block the road on a daily and nightly basis.

Contemporary architects should note that Labour’s “Better Homes Initiative” to improve social housing in later years was also a disaster by inviting private developers.

No improvements to insulation or interior/ exterior function were completed to help tenants but to fill the pockets of private investors.

Now tenants suffer constant drilling and scaffolders’ noise to undo the damage. Contemporary architects and social housing/town planners should live with social housing tenants for a while and listen and see what tenants really suffer as a result of their designs and plans.

Tenants need good heating and noise insulation; playgrounds in parks – away from flats and living areas. They need flats at a distance from busy, polluted, roads or at least lots of pollution-absorbing hedges and trees to absorb noise and air pollution.

Then they can celebrate that they have met or attempted to address tenants’ needs!

FIONA CUSSEN
NW3