Heygate Estate, Elephant and Castle. Flickr/Steve Cadman. Some rights reserved.
Over the weekend of 13-14 June of this year, three Lambeth housing estates earmarked for regeneration, Cressingham Gardens, Central Hill and Knight’s Walk, hosted Open Garden Estates, an event organised by Architects for Social Housing (ASH). Founded by architect Geraldine Dening in order to respond architecturally to London’s housing crisis, ASH is a collective of architects, urban designers, engineers, planners, academics, theatre directors, photographers, writers and housing activists operating with developing ideas under set principles. First among these is the conviction that infill, build-over and refurbishment are more sustainable solutions to London’s housing needs than the demolition of the city’s council estates – enabling the continued existence of the communities they house. ASH offers support, advice and expertise to residents who feel their interests are not being represented by local councils or housing associations during the regeneration process. ASH’s primary responsibility is to existing residents – tenants and leaseholders alike; but it is also committed to finding viable alternatives to developer-led regeneration – alternatives that are in the interests of the wider London community.
From housing estate to brownfield land
Open Garden Estates was part of ASH’s ongoing attempt to banish the myths of council estates disseminated in the media. Invited by ASH to visit Cressingham Gardens on the border of Brixton’s Brockwell Park, a journalist from The Independent on Sunday expressed her surprise at its green spaces and strong community when she expected, she said, ‘discarded syringes’. It is this pervasive image of housing estates as concrete jungles, as ‘notorious’ and ‘doomed’ sink estates, where living conditions are ‘scandalous’ and ‘chronically bad’, that is at the heart of the proposal, in the recently published Adonis report, to rebrand all existing housing estates in Greater London as ‘brownfield land.’
