Tenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Council housing, or public housing, has been an integral and highly visible part of the British urban environment since its inception, providing accommodation for as much as a third of the population by the 1970s. Given its societal and physical prominence, it should surely have merited thoughtful and high quality design consideration, although this has often not been the case, as many a dilapidated ‘sink’ estate can attest. However, there are some notable examples of excellent public housing, a number of them designed and built between the 1960s and 1970s, which achieved great acclaim at the time, and are worthy of revisiting. Now, 50 years later, when exemplars of sensitive, sustainable models of affordable social housing are needed more than ever, it is timely to determine how these heralded models are holding up, and whether there are lessons to be learned from them. This paper evaluates three of the most prominent and celebrated public housing schemes of the mid century to evaluate their current effectiveness in meeting their original goals and identify shared elements of success that could benefit future social housing design in terms of livability, residential sustainability, and urban fit.