Architect whose low-rise, high-density social housing offered a popular alternative to tower blocks

Not all social housing in the 1960s was about tower blocks. High-rise buildings were unpopular with tenants, lifts were costly and broke down, and the surrounding lawns were hard to maintain. Moreover, on the slopes around Hampstead Heath in London, towers would have blocked views towards St Paul’s Cathedral. This area became part of the newly created borough of Camden in 1965 and a visionary new chief architect, Sydney Cook, assembled a bright team of assistants to find an alternative form of housing. One of these young architects was Peter Tábori, who has died aged 83. The Whittington estate which he designed, originally known as Highgate New Town, exemplified a solution that was both innovative and successful.

Camden had identified an area of semi-derelict Victorian housing for redevelopment next to Highgate’s east cemetery, where Karl Marx is buried. Tábori realised that, on such a steep hillside, lines of flats and maisonettes could be stacked one above the other and entered from a common entrance at mid-level on the uphill side. Car parking could be set into the hill between these terraces and decked over with pedestrian walkways and children’s playgrounds.

Continue reading…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You May Also Like

‘I’m too old for this’: the harrowing flight from Donetsk’s perilous border towns

Urged to evacuate, vulnerable residents are being carried to safety in makeshift…

She Left the Corporate Ladder to Become a Travel Entrepreneur

When Jateria Pittman took her first international trip for a study-abroad program…