The Dorset Estate, Tower Hamlets

I feel guilty. The Dorset Estate has been staring me in the face for the last six months. And I've ignored it. My excuse is I was waiting for the perfect crisp, clear January morning to take some photos.

Designed by Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin and finished in 1957, the main buildings are two 11-storey Y-shaped blocks called George Loveless House and James Hammett House.

Approaching from Columbia Road you arrive at the south-side of the Y, bathed in morning sunshine.

But you can also approach from Diss Street, just off Hackney Road.

Or from Ravenscroft Park.

Aligned with the geometry of the main buildings are six lower blocks - James Brine House - which is actually four separate four-storey blocks and then two more - Robert Owen and Arthur Wade houses.

Altogether there are 266 homes on the estate.

James Brine House

A small community centre, the Dorset Social Club, was also built on the site and still looks in use today.

On the east of the estate on Ravenscroft Road is the Ravenscroft pub, seen here with Sivill House in the background.

At the top of each of the buildings is a decorative oval, featuring human silhouettes.

So make some time to see this nice piece of street art, incorporating a ground level decorative piece of concrete.

Stockton House, Bethnal Green

This is Stockton House in Bethnal Green, right in front of Kedleston Walk.

It's a high-rise block facing on to a small dog park and surrounded by low-rise maisonette housing.

There's Kedleston Walk in the background.

And on one corner is a new-build.

A Manhattan project

This tower block in Manhattan, just as you come across the Williamsburg bridge, is pretty incredible.

A trip down Motown lane

This really is stretching the title of this blog to the limit. I know.

But in the interest of appreciating council housing everywhere, here are some pictures of the Brewster-Douglass housing projects in Detroit. An early home to none other than Diana Ross (apparently all the Supremes met here) - she moved to this part of town in 1958 on her 14th birthday.

Like a lot of the buildings in the city the blocks are now vacant.

The housing, designed by local architects Harley, Ellington & Day, was built by the city of Detroit and finished in 1955 - a mix of low and high-rise buildings.

To give you an idea of how central this is to downtown Detroit, this is the view south towards the Renaissance Centre.

At first the commission stipulated stringent rules for tenants. They had to be working, earning a certain level of income.

By the 1970s these regulations no longer existed, and in a bid to keep down crime the city turned the blocks into housing for elderly people.

This strategy didn't work, and the buildings are now empty...even of squatters, who in Detroit can find much grander homes to bunk down in....

Leaving London: Park Hill, Sheffield

I spent this last weekend in Sheffield, and it really wouldn't have been complete without a visit to Park Hill.

The estate, designed by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, was built between 1957 and 1961. Since then it has loomed over the city - a giant hunk of concrete and brick.

English Heritage gave it grade II* listing in 1998, making it the largest listed building in Europe.

Approaching from the ring road, the first buildings you see are the the tallest North Block and its slightly smaller neighbour, both of which have been refurbished by developer Urban Splash working with architects Hawkins Brown and Studio Egret West.

A newly landscaped path leads up to the building...

Glass lifts and shiny metal staircases will bring the new occupiers to their flats.

Where the renovated part ends is perhaps one of the world's most famous pieces of crap graffiti: "Clare Middleton I love you will u marry me", which has been partly immortalised in neon.

Claire Middleton didn't end up marrying the man in question and unfortunately died at a young age from cancer. (The story behind the graffiti was the subject of a Radio 4 documentary earlier this year).

It's sad to see the state of decay of the original buildings.

Walking around the back of the estate, stairs lead to the streets in the sky...

The corridors with no tenants left are completely boarded up.

The local boozer, integrated into the building, also abandoned.

Communal areas.

These photos really don't do justice to how marvellous it is to visit Park Hill. We walked around for hours and hours, seeing it from all over the city.

Estate from the train

I visited my friend yesterday in Eastbourne, and on the way back on the train into Victoria station I took this photograph.

I love how these buildings look like they're made of toy blocks. The lift towers on the right and left have pastel coloured stripes on top. And the bridge corridors connecting the right hand lift tower to the building have light blue roofs.

The whole thing looks like it's been conceived by a ten year old with a love for order. And for candy.

The 1900 Boundary Estate

Anyone that has spent any time strolling around Brick Lane and Shoreditch on a sunny Sunday will undoubtedly have come across the Boundary Estate.

Lying just east of Shoreditch High Street and to the north of Bethnal Green Road, what now looks like a series of mansion blocks is actually the country's first proper council estate.

In 1890 London County Council embarked on a slum clearance programme of the Old Nichol, which included the Friars Mount slum.

Having served as an inspiration to a number of authors - including Arthur Morrison who wrote A Child of the Jago (which I admit I haven't read, but I know is the name of a nearby shop selling all sorts of glorious things) - the council decided to knock down the existing housing and build a series of social dwellings for the residents.

In the middle of the estate is Arnold's Circus - a bandstand built from the rubble of the existing slum. A refurbishment of this was completed by Tower Hamlets council last year and numerous events are now held there. 

More information can be found at The Friends of Arnold Circus website here.

Going back to 1900, when the estate was finished - the re-homing didn't work out quite how LCC imagined. Those suffering the worst poverty were forced to move further east and north to Bethnal Green and Dalston, with the properties occupied by the poorer, but nevertheless more middle class people, who could afford to live there.

Today the council has brought much of estate (which is Grade II listed, along with the bandstand) up to decent homes standard. 

Though in some instances you can still imagine what it might have been like 100 years ago.