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 [...]
Following my last post on Flats! I joined #househistoryhour to present a session called A Brief History of Flats. It was during this that @EllenCLeslie flagged up some other flats: the Albert Hall Mansions; although I knew the area, I did not appreciate their historical significance as part of how we would live looking forward. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Lubetkin’s stairwell hovers like layers of propellers in the atrium at Bevin Court; it is nothing short of stunning. If this is not enough, in the entrance hall to this modernist council built apartment block, there is also a bust of Ernest Bevin and the Peter Yates' mural Day and Night, Winged Bulls. How must it [...]
Now that it's cold and dark here and the news seems all doom and gloom, here's some of Entraveaux's housing in the Maritime Alps to cheer us all. If you're in that part of France, check it out, it really is beautiful with the shuttered apartments and impossibly narrow streets overlooked by the citadel, some [...]
I’ve been fascinated to watch the red kites creating their ‘home’ in a tree at the back of my garden. They are majestic birds, their vast wingspan soaring in rising air currents, looking strangely petite when perched in the trees, carefully surveying all around. Their cry is very distinctive, almost mammalian. The kites found the [...]
In last month’s blog we went to Margate and that’s where we start again this month. Margate’s seaside heritage is exemplified by the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital built practically on the seafront in the 1790s, back in the days when sea air and sea bathing were considered to cure all manner of diseases. This hospital [...]
As we’re all struggling to keep our spirits up in the cold and wet at this time of the year it’s time to think of sunnier times and escape and where we might be ‘living’ for a while on our travels or holidays. My friend’s parents had an orange VW kombi in the 1970s and [...]
An amazing chance find on a recent visit to Northern Spain. Who knew that Antonio Gaudi’s first house was built in Comillas, a lovely seaside town, a place once favoured by the Spanish royal family? Most people of course know Gaudi’s Barcelona works, particularly the Sagrada Familia Basilica, which I shamefully admit I’ve yet to [...]
