Keeling House

Forever an advocate of Modernism, I thought I'd post some photos of one of my favourite buildings, Keeling House. I recently wrote a paper about Keeling House and more generally the post-war British Modernist movement. Keeling House provides a striking metaphor for the transition from Modernism into Post-modernism in gentrified east London resulting from its renovations in the late 90's.

A little about the building:

Post-war Britain was financially ruined, physically exhausted, and facing a massive housing crisis. There was a need to rebuild. To British modernists, who had until then been unable to convince authorities that modernist housing schemes were the answer to the crisis, this was seen as an opportunity. Modernism offered cheaper more efficient means of satisfying a larger population and it was this utilitarian ideal that was attractive to a post-war government. Modernist housing projects began to appear across Britain distinguished by their “form follows function” design.

British modernist, Denys Lasdun, designed keeling House; a 15-storey council block in East London’s Bethnal Green in 1954. The building, which he called a ‘cluster block’, was completed in 1957 and consists of 4 residential towers connected to a central service tower. Lasdun wanted to build housing that encouraged a community spirit among its residents, something he believed was lacking in many previous modernist housing projects. The flats were built as maisonettes to reflect the form of traditional east London homes, and communal hanging gardens were provided in the hope that residents would interact with one another. Keeling house was the very first post-war modernist building listed for its architectural importance and is a good example of the brutalist style of Lasdun, which he later applied to other commissions such as the National Theatre.