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Keeling House was designed by Denys Lasdun, one of the major figures in the post-war “Brutalist” movement in architecture.
Brutalism has proved an unfortunate nickname: it comes from the French “béton brut”, untreated concrete, and refers to the way that bare concrete is exposed showing the shuttering marks, but is often taken to mean that the buildings are brutal and unsympathetic to the mere humans who have to use them. As such, it is seen, wrongly, as synonymous with the many undoubted disasters of 1960s architecture and is often applied inappropriately to any large building of that era. In fact, Keeling House is a remarkably inventive and, dare one say it, humane example of a tower block: rather than one big slab it is made of four stacks of flats, canted away from each other in an irregular manner to maximise sunlight, which all converge on a central column housing not merely lifts but also a little plaza on every level where residents might meet, talk or hang out washing. The design comes closer to the perhaps unrealisable ideal of the “street in the sky” than most tower blocks.
By the 1980s it was run down, and a botched repair in 1984 failed to deal with its physical problems. Residents were decanted and, lacking funds to repair the building, Tower Hamlets council sought to demolish it. This was prevented by its receiving listed status. In 1999 it was sold to the private sector. Following this it was refurbished and acquired a concierge system to control access, slightly changing the ground floor but without major damage to the design.

Created: Fri, 1 Jan 2016, Updated: Sun, 19 Jan 2025