Keeling House

Location: London

Architect: Denys Lasdun

Completed: 1957

Designed by Denys Lasdun and completed in 1957, Keeling House in as a cluster of 4 blocks of maisonettes arranged around a central service tower.

Photo: Municipal Dreams https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/keeling-house-bethnal-green/

Lasdun, who also designed the brutalist Royal National Theatre, on London's South Bank, aimed at taking a different approach to previous tower block architecture - one which would preserve the neighborhood feel of conventional streets.

Photo: Municipal Dreams https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/keeling-house-bethnal-green/

Each dwelling was a maisonette rather than a flat. Unlike a most conventional tower blocks, Keeling House has four wings that each look onto one another, encouraging contact between neighbours. Between the central lift tower and the front doors of the apartments, tenants had to pass communal 'drying areas' for laundry and storage, where Lasdun hoped that social interchange would be as natural as in the streets below. However, he also designed the homes for privacy; the balconies face outward and do not look onto one another.

Having been come close to being demolished in the early, Nineties, Keeling House was given Grade II* listing in 1993. A radical renovation in 2001 added a penthouse storey and concierge service.