BLOCK PARTY

Andrew Beharrell explores the idea of mansion blocks for the many

The mansion block is back in fashion as an inspiration for today’s housing. Phrases like ‘modern mansion block’ and ‘new London vernacular’ aim to confer a comforting connection with London’s domestic built heritage, even when proposals are bafflingly remote from the Victorian and Edwardian originals. The precedent is better understood by the government-appointed Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. In Living with Beauty (2020), they promote the mansion block as part of the way to deliver ‘gentle density’ and roll back the tide of high-rise. We have previously calculated that the original inner London mansion blocks often achieved around 200 homes per hectare, which qualifies as ‘superdensity’ and is in the upper range of the GLA’s recently retired density matrix.

There is no commonly agreed technical definition of ‘mansion block’ or ‘mansion flat’. Estate agents like the status conferred by ‘mansion’ and Wikipedia follows suit with ‘apartments designed for the appearance of grandeur’. One of the earliest examples is Richard Norman Shaw’s Albert Hall Mansions of 1879. Purpose-built flats for the wealthier classes were such a rarity in London that the architect travelled to Paris for inspiration. Elaborately articulated and decorated street frontages with grand entrances helped to distance the new typology from ‘model dwellings’ for the working classes, which charities such as Peabody started delivering in the 1860s. My definition of a mansion block might run something like this: mid-rise apartment block, typically four to eight storeys, with 2-8 flats per level, usually arranged around a compact stair core. Adjoining blocks are often grouped to create a continuous street frontage, each having a prominent front entrance. This definition distances the mansion block from other common contemporary typologies: corridor access, deck or gallery access and point block. Here are some mansion block milestones, which also chart the changing character of London and show how the typology has evolved from exclusive to inclusive:

CASE STUDY

Tower and York Houses - Fitzrovia

Tower and York Houses were designed by Herbert Fuller-Clark in 1903 to “house respectable clerks of modest means”. The flats were self-contained, but tiny, with a sitting room at the front, bedroom, and small kitchen/pantry at the back. Overall size was 38 sq m (compared with today’s national minimum of 50 sq m): these were the micro-flats of their day, a century before Pocket Living.

© Garton Jones

Marsham Court Pimlico

Marsham Court, designed by T P Bennett & Son in 1937, and its many siblings in 1930s London, still just about meet my criteria for a ‘mansion block’, although the height stretches my definition of mid-rise. At around 61 sq m the flats were compact and closely pre-figured today’s national space standard. Today’s London Plan requires every flat to have a decent balcony, big enough for outdoor meals and lockdown cocktails. It was not always so: Marsham Court and the Edwardian flats in this story had decorative balconies which were not much use for anything except a few unhappy pot plants.

How can London’s mansion blocks provide a template for modern living?

Mansion blocks also challenge some of the orthodoxies of London’s planning standards, which are tending to impose sameness across the capital. They may require trade-offs in daylight and sunlight to some rooms; they may not achieve dual aspect for every home; they may have reduced privacy distances at the rear. And yet, like London’s terraced housing stock, they are enduringly popular and in demand. We should learn from that.

CASE STUDY

Woodside Square - Muswell Hill

Every flat has views in two or three directions and a large balcony on to a garden square. What is really unusual is that affordable homes, for rent or shared ownership, are completely integrated with homes bought by wealthy downsizers. ‘Pepper-potting’ of different tenures is usually resisted by developers and social landlords alike, partly for practical reasons of management and service charges, but partly out of an atavistic fear of conflict between the classes. But here social inclusivity seems to work fine and I think it comes down to the intimacy of the mansion block, where everyone can know their neighbours and take ownership of the shared spaces.

New Garden Quarter - Stratford, E15

If Woodside Square is a model for older people living in London’s suburbs, New Garden Quarter, next to Stratford and the former Olympic Village, is all about bringing families back to the city. 45% of the 470 apartments in this recently completed development are family flats with three bedrooms or more, and 35% of all the homes are affordable. They are arranged in seven-storey mansion blocks around a large new London square: from their private balcony parents can watch their children playing in the square below. The planning requirement to include larger homes, even in high density apartment developments is controversial. There is significantly more profit in one- and two-bedroom flats, which have been the preferred product of London’s developers for 20 years and more. This is not just greed: more profit means more affordable housing and higher contributions to infrastructure and other local benefits.

Andrew Beharrell is a senior advisor with architectural practice Pollard Thomas Edwards pollardthomasedwards.co.uk