Sun, Space, and Greenery: The New City in Finsbury
The Finsbury Estate, by Carl Ludwig Franck
A Walk with James Dunnett
Saturday 25th June 2022, starting in Myddlelton Square Garden EC1 at 1400
Starting in 1938 with Lubetkin’s Finsbury Health Centre, until to the completion of Carl Ludwig Franck’s Finsbury Estate in 1970, the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury undertook a series of projects that remade their polluted and slum ridden part of London according to the Corbusian ideals of ‘sun, space, and greenery’ . Clearing the traditional street patterns, the borough created new parkland and located a series of buildings in space - medical facilities and housing - within it to serve the needs of their population.
The Finsbury Health Centre when newly built in 1938. Much of the surrounding housing was subsequently demolished, and much of the cleared space turned into parkland.
By the time this wave of construction came to an end, the ideas that underpinned it were being challenged - and work by Neave Brown, Harley Sherlock, Kenneth Pring and others re-asserted the importance of the street in urban space. Theirs was a Modernist revisionism that aimed to work “with the warp and weft of the city” rather than remake it from new.
This walk is an argument in defence of the older vision of modernism, and its value in greening a part of London that once lacked open space. At a time when such open space is under attack by councils throughout London under pressure to build more housing on any land they already own, it is important to draw attention to its value.
It will look at the work of the three architects most responsible for remaking Finsbury: Berthold Lubetkin, Joseph Emberton, and in particular Carl Ludwig Franck, of whom Lubetkin said “'truly I never saw such a talent’.
Starting at Myddleton Square, we will visit Bevin Court, the Finsbury Health Centre, before walking through the Finsbury, Brunswick, King Square, and the Pleydell Estates, before ending at the Stafford Cripps Estate. We estimate the walk will take around two and a half hours from start to finish.
James Dunnett trained in architecture at Cambridge and sculpture at St Martin’s. He worked for Erno Goldfinger 1973-75 as his first job, before moving to the London Borough of Camden when work ran out. He started to work on his own account in 1983, the same year as he mounted a retrospective exhibition of Goldfinger’s work at the Architectural Association. With occasional teaching, writing and lecturing he has continued to run his own practice as architect ever since, with an exhibition of his sculpture earlier this year. He was Joint Chair of DOCOMOMO-UK with Dennis Sharp 2002-2010.