Housing pioneer Neave Brown dies aged 88

January 10, 2018 Jessica Mairs Architecture, Architecture Article, Architecture News, Home design ideas, Interior Design 0

Acclaimed architect Neave Brown, a “pioneer of quality public housing” for London, has died following a battle with cancer on 9 January 2018.

Brown was named the 2018 laureate of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, receiving his accolade in an unusually early ceremony at the end of last year due to ill health.

In an interview to mark the award, Brown reflected on his career as an architect for the London Borough of Camden, where he designed a number of low-rise high-density housing schemes – one of which he and his wife Janet made home, the Dunboyne Road estate.

Hailed by RIBA as a “pioneer of quality public housing” at a time when the standard of social housing in the UK is very much in question, he also discussed the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire and the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens in his hometown of London.

Brown told Dezeen he was “astonished” to have received the award so many believed he deserved much earlier in his career.

“I am astonished that my work is alive and well in the history of architecture, and that young people look at it and come and visit it, and it is a very active ingredient in the background now,” he said.

“To me it had just become to my great sadness, simply a piece in the past. And I was, in that sense, dumbfounded and amazed when I heard that I had been put up for the Royal Gold Medal.”

In an interview at his home in his Dunboyne Road estate, Brown reflected on his career as an architect for the London Borough of Camden. Photograph by Jessica Mairs

Paying tribute to Brown today, RIBA president Ben Derbyshire said: “The architecture community has lost a giant. Neave was a pioneer: he showed us how intellectual rigour, sensitive urbanism, his supreme design skill and determination could deliver well-being to the local community he served so well in Camden.”

“His ideas, for low-rise high-density housing with private outside space for all residents, still stand as a radical antidote to much of the unthinking, not to say degrading, housing product of the era,” he added. “Neave’s contribution to architecture will not be forgotten.”

Brown was due to host a debate on social housing at the RIBA in London with The Guardian’s architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, on 1 February.

Wainwright today described Brown as a “feisty, fearless and a staunch defender of social housing until the end”. Architecture critic Catherine Slessor also paid tribute to Brown’s work, tweeting: “A life well lived.”

Brown was born in 1929 in Utica, New York, before moving to the UK as a teenager.

He took up a post at Camden council, where he designed his best known project – the Alexandra Road estate. The eight-storey housing scheme in north west London has a striking stepped formation, with an avenue running through its centre and elevated walkways above.

The estate draws huge crowds during London’s annual Open House festival and while many of the homes are still publicly owned, private sales are in high demand.

The striking stepped formation of the Alexandra Road estate rises to eight storeys, and walkways run through the tiers of the scheme. Photograph is by Jessica Mairs

Tributes from the architecture community and the residents of his buildings have flooded social media:

The post Housing pioneer Neave Brown dies aged 88 appeared first on Dezeen.