Inner Ring. Baron’s Place

More ‘volumetrics’. The positive aspect of this apartment
block concerns the service provided to London’s
‘key workers’ who can’t afford London’s apartment
prices. However, one can’t but worry about varieties of
‘experimentation’ on comparatively deprived sectors of
the community. The scheme provides very small ‘flatlets’
(36 sq. m. one bed, and two-person apartments of 54.sq.
m.) made from units of 3.6m x 5m or 7m (Raines Dairy
was 11.8m) proffered in guise of the joker’s costume.

But this isn’t why the planners shamed the Peabody
Trust (the developers) by turning down the first planning
application — it was because of the size of the ‘microflats’

(there’s a PhD just in that
discussion). Go there,
have a look, compare it
where neighbouring public
housing and make up
your own mind. Also visit
some of the other Peabody
projects mentioned in this
guide and other modular
projects listed below. No
doubt their design will
improve as architects
realise that the issue is
not displays of technical

wizardry and acrobatics, but the quality of life for the
people who live in these homes and don’t give a damn
about whether they are prefabricated or not. (In truth,
they probably do; modularisation still suffers a poor public
image.)

Other newly completed modular schemes include

♦ Wyndam Road, Southwark. Tube: Oval. Architect: PCKO. Eighteen apartments.

♦ Barling Court, Larkhall Lane, Stockwell SW4. Architect: PCKO. Eight apartments.

Also see Raines Dairy (p.219) and Murray Grove

(p.222).

Photo: Foster & Partners / Nigel Young

244

The Foster studio (1990) might be one of the more pleasant architectural studios in town: designed for London’s most successful architect as a double-height space, 60m long and 24m wide, overlooking the river through a tall wall of glass and accessed by a long, slow stair that Alvar Aalto might have been proud of. The rest of the building is comparatively ordinary, built as speculative offices below and

apartments above, in order to finance the development. Compare with the Rogers’ riverside studio further west, at Hammersmith. The studio is often open during London Open House.

The architects of Baron s Place (above) have adopted a distinctly upbeat approach to addressing the difficulties of volumetric housing provision and disguising its atomised construction as a unity — aesthetically, as a kind of ‘displacement’ activity obviating the constructional realities. It’s all a long way from Bucky Fuller and Archigram’s dreams and there are interesting comparisons to be made with