Resident Gerlinde Gniewosz, Coco Whittaker from the Twentieth Century Society, along with AT Awards judges Catherine Burd, Deyan Sudjic, Sarah Allan and Marion Baeli share their thoughts on the lessons to be learnt from Cressingham Gardens Estate and why the project deserves to be protected from demolition. Photographer Timothy Soar captures the estate as it is today.
Designed by Lambeth Borough Architects Department, led by Edward ‘Ted’ Hollamby, Cressingham Gardens Estate has endured as an excellent example of late 20th-century public housing.
An early adopter of a low-traffic neighbourhood approach, vehicles are banished to the estate perimeter, with the placement of the 306 homes designed around generous green space and existing trees. The buildings have proved adaptable. With no loadbearing internal walls, spaces can be easily reconfigured to accommodate changing lifestyles and growing families. A ‘circus tent’ rotunda, originally designed for a playgroup, now operates as community centre and co-operative nursery, while launderettes have been converted into large studio flats.
Residents have fought a ten-year campaign to resist plans to demolish the estate to make way for a high-rise, high-density development, and have worked up an alternative proposal with local architect Variant Office. The ‘People’s Plan’ includes a basic green retrofit, installation of renewables, enhanced community facilities, conversion of underutilised car parking and garage spaces to create 23 new homes, and the construction of 33 new homes for social rent.
The layout allows for natural surveillance, encourages sociable relations between neighbours and gives residents interesting glimpses of the park.
Deyan Sudjic Architecture was a very different place when Cressingham Gardens was designed at the beginning of the 1970s. The most talented professionals looked forward to a career in the public sector. Ted Hollamby, who led Southwark Council’s architecture team (and lived in William Morris’s Red House), was the epitome of the idea of the architect as a public servant. Cressingham Gardens is rooted in its setting with an ingenious layout. That Southwark are now determined to demolish the scheme is a reflection not of its inherent quality, but of the tortured economics of housing provision. Its residents have fought long and hard to save their homes, and what is clearly a special place.
Sarah Allan There is no better evidence of a well-designed neighbourhood than its residents choosing to submit it for an award decades after its completion.
Gerlinde Gniewosz, resident I’m a single mother. But my daughter views Cressingham Gardens as her family. I believe that the sense of community has been fostered through the layout and design of the estate. There are beautiful spaces where people go, and kids can play. People have small back gardens, but then they spill out into the community areas. You cannot go anywhere in Cressingham without bumping into your neighbours. So what would normally take a two or three minute walk to the bus stop actually usually takes half an hour, an hour, simply because you have to chat to everyone along the way.
The estate grew up around mature trees which were incorporated into the landscaping. Cars are relegated to the perimeter leaving a network of pedestrian parts. Hollamby conceived the estate as a village set within a landscape characterised by what he described as “a sense of smallness in the bigness of the city”.
Marion Baeli Against the odds, Cressingham Gardens has remained a much-cherished housing development where the strongest sense of community is obvious. This site represents one of many similar post-war, underfunded, under-maintained estates in the UK. We should learn to avoid the destruction of these projects and the dismantling of long-standing strongly-bonded communities.
Coco Whittaker, Twentieth Century Society In the 60s and 70s Lambeth acquired a national reputation for the quality of their social housing projects thanks to Ted Hollamby’s leadership. He believed that architecture should be anti-monumental, anti-stylistic and fit for ordinary people. Cressingham was developed in collaboration with Lambeth residents, and Hollamby said “it wasn’t the done thing to go out and talk to people, but we did. We had meetings in the pub where we could have a drink with local people and discuss the project.”
Catherine Burd As a jury we felt that, especially when it comes to housing, social sustainability is a fundamental measure of a project’s long-term success. That’s where Cressingham Gardens wins out. There may be problems with its architecture, and with some of its fabric, but what it has got is this incredibly strong sense of community. That is gold dust, and its value should not be underestimated.
Ben Derbyshire The residents at Cressingham Gardens Estate deserve a special mention for their committed demonstration that community cohesion and enthusiastic activism can overcome a multitude of challenges.
Catherine Burd The fact that plans for its demolition have been stopped in their tracks by the strength of local opposition demonstrates the huge wealth of social capital that lies within this project. Every enlightened housing architect sets out to design a project that engenders that sense of allegiance to a place. It’s incredibly difficult to do, and something that, if you’re lucky, develops over time. So why wouldn’t you value it when it’s there?
Project presentation
View Oli Marshall and Coco Whittaker from the Twentieth Century Society and resident Gerlinde Gniewosz from Save Cressingham Gardens give a presentation on Cressingham Gardens Estate below
Additional Images
