| Summary : The Brunswick Centre, located between Kings Cross and Russell Square, is one of Englands iconic post-war buildings and, as such, is now a Listed Building. Built between 1968 and 1972, the building comprises 560 flats for 1644 people with 80 commercial units that include shops, a cinema (now divided into two) and small offices. Below it all is parking space for 925 cars on two levels. Patrick Hodgkinson began to develop the concept for the design of The Brunswick Centre with his study of the Loughborough Road Estate in Lambeth by the LCC, where Sir Leslie Martin was the chief architect. Hodgkinson and Martin collaborated in 1957 on an unbuilt low-rise scheme for St Pancras Borough Council. This established some of the principles that would be carried through to The Brunswick Centre; no social segregation, a search for low cost-high density building types, an open space for each unit and a synthesis of scale with the surroundings. The Foundling Project, as it was originally known - after the Foundling Hospital who owned the freehold to this part of Bloomsbury, began in 1959/60. The scheme by Hodgkinson and Martin, who was involved up until 1963, had three aims: first to 'test' low-rise, high-density building, secondly to relate housing to shops and thirdly to provide a nucleus to future development. The client was Marchmont Properties Ltd and the building firm of Sir Robert McAlpine was one of the financers. McAlpine, unsurprisingly, were also the consultant structural and services engineer, quantity surveyor and contractor. The structure, designed by the McAlpine Design Group, is a reinforced concrete frame, with a considerable amount of structural brickwork. The external walls of the flats are rendered blockwork. |