This blog was first published on the MODA website in 2022. Hendon has a fascinating range of housing types which reveal much about social, design and architectural history in just a few streets. Far from being a sleepy suburb, Hendon is a place of rapid change: one house (with a plaque) has now been demolished [...]
Happy new year to everyone. This post has in fact been in the making for years – further delayed by Covid-related workload – as I have tried to collect my thoughts and fill in gaps and it can still only scratch the surface of understanding something about the history of flats. Some flats and indeed [...]
At a recent event I was reminded of the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whom I knew to be American and prominent in 1920s modern art. Sometimes things seem to come back to you for a reason and unexpectedly, I also had Frida Kahlo on my mind, and her Blue House in Mexico. It prompted me to [...]
Whilst some may criticise the ‘sameness’ of suburbia of the interwar period 1918-1939, looking more closely we can find numerous decent family homes set in landscaped places and some lovely examples of housing design history, especially those built during the 1930s. Development of suburbia was not of course an isolated event, but part of an [...]
One of the best things about living on the London underground is having such easy access to London's countless cultural venues and range of exhibitions. At first glance the V&A - a museum of art and design - may seem an unexpected place to host an exhibition about social housing. It's a small exhibition, but [...]
Estates like Park Hill were built as a brave and positive contribution to housing as part of a wider vision of how we might live in the urban environment. The council architects Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith (who died very recently) had drawn inspiration from Le Corbusier’s post war Unité d’Habitation and this was to be [...]
YouTube clip also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-jNMS0hVVc Who remembers Mary, Mungo and Midge? I’d always thought it was in black and white, and this YouTube is the first time I have ever seen it in colour! Richard Baker narrated the stories in his very deep voice, about Mary, who lived with her dog and pet mouse, in [...]
