Review Feature: Fabian Watkinson | www.openhouse.org | RIBA

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The Review - FEATURE
Published: 18 September 2008

Fabian Watkinson during renovation work last year

Open house, through the front door

THE doors of flats on a Highgate Newtown estate will be thrown open this weekend as part an event organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects celebrating London’s best buildings.
Numbers 8 and 79 Stoneleigh Terrace are open for architect-led tours on Sunday between 10am and 5pm.
The council flats join such landmark designs as the British Library, Centre Point and Kenwood House in RIBA’s Open House weekend.
The Whittington estate replaced back-to-back Victorian terraces, which in the late 1960s were seen as the worst examples of 20th century slum housing. The new designs offered private balconies, modern bathrooms and big windows.
But the 1970s concrete blocks were beset with problems when built. The work on the Whittington estate started in 1972 and did not finish until 1979. Camden Council budgeted £2 million for the works; it rose to £9 million.
Despite problems that continue to this day – the flats have been at the centre of a complicated renovation project which ran over budget and time this year – home owner Fabian Watkinson is so keen on the flats he and another neighbour, architect David Kohn, are opening their homes up on Sunday. They say it reveals the story behind Camden’s golden era of social housing.
The architect who built the estate was Hungarian student Peter Tabori. He began the project in his final year and was completing his training at famed modernist Erno Goldfinger’s practice in Hampstead when the designs were taken on by Camden.
Mr Watkinson, a music teacher, has lived there for 13 years. When he first moved in, he believed the fact the house was on a council estate put off potential buyers. But he said Mr Tabori’s designs showed he had taken on board the issues associated with the worst elements of social housing of the 1950s to 1970s.
He said: “People have prejudices against social housing, but unless you come through the front door, you can’t understand it. But above all, I am very nosy. I’d love to look around other people’s homes.”
DAN CARRIER

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