Arlington House and the future of the UK’s brutalist high-rises

“It’s my concrete nest excessive within the sky, which turns orange because the solar units,” says Dutch artist Joline Kwakkenbos of her 18th-storey flat in Arlington Home, within the seaside city of Margate, Kent. Considered one of 4 flats owned and let by the artist Tracey Emin, the white-walled, concrete-floored area appears west in the direction of the haunting Reculver Roman fort that seems in a lot of JMW Turner’s work. “It’s like residing in a shifting portray, with a seagull that visits each morning,” says Kwakkenbos. Down on the eleventh ground, overlooking the Dreamland amusement park, John Moss’s view is totally different. A 70-year-old former Thanet District Council worker, he has lived right here since 2003 and has taken the constructing’s proprietor, Metropolitan Property Realizations Restricted (MPRL), a part of the Freshwater Group of Corporations, to property tribunal 12 occasions. “We all know it wants work and is troublesome to handle,” he says. Grievances over time have ranged from alleged extreme service expenses for raise repairs to residents being charged for electrical energy utilized by cell phone firms with masts on the roof. Ten have resulted in a discount in prices and expenses levied in opposition to residents. “Lots of people need the constructing knocked down,” Moss says. “It’s not precisely fairly from the surface.” However the “battle to have repairs achieved” is one he’s ready to tackle.Artist Joline Kwakkenbos in her 18th-storey ‘concrete nest’, owned by Tracey Emin ‘It’s like residing in a shifting portray, with a seagull that visits each morning’ A hulking concrete monolith that has loomed over Margate’s prepare station and Foremost Sands since 1963, Arlington Home is the city’s most divisive constructing. To some, it’s a greying, demolition-ready eyesore, and expensive to keep up. Others argue it’s a modernist icon, pointing to architect Russell Diplock’s distinctive sawtooth facade, which echoes the waves under — every of the constructing’s 142 flats has nearly wraparound sea views. Within the context of a housing disaster, the federal government’s housebuilding targets of 1.5mn over 5 years, and issues over embodied carbon, it’s one of many starkest examples of the central stress over brutalist high-rises within the UK. None of this was fairly the plan when the Catford-born Bernard Sunley purchased the land in 1961 to assemble a “park-and-buy buying centre with luxurious flats”. Sunley had gone from constructing airfields through the second world warfare to turning into one in all Britain’s most distinguished property builders, however was terminally ailing when he submitted drawings — impressed partly by travels in Cuba and Florida, and his earlier developments within the Bahamas — for the plot that included a buying arcade, a restaurant, a theatre and a rooftop swimming pool. Although the latter two didn’t make it into Diplock’s closing designs, the constructing opened in December 1963 with a Carrara marble and teak foyer, and crisp white concrete cladding with mica flakes that mirrored the daylight.However riots between rival youth teams mods and rockers within the spring of 1964 dented Margate’s enchantment, and in July 1964 it was mockingly reported within the Each day Mirror that only one particular person lived at Arlington Home. Sunley died later that yr, and in 1969, MPRL took over the constructing. At this time, the portfolio of its major enterprise, Daejan Holdings, consists of London condominium blocks and prime industrial buildings, together with Holborn’s Africa Home, and a number of other addresses on Oxford Avenue. The founding Freshwater household is reportedly price round £2.6bn.Excessive-rises resembling Arlington have been in-built postwar Britain as high-density replacements for bombed properties Many buildings like Arlington Home emerged after the second world warfare — typically erected by councils that wanted to exchange bombed buildings with high-density housing. In lots of instances there was a utopian imaginative and prescient: typically they have been conceived as Le Corbusier-influenced “streets within the sky”. The truth was typically fairly totally different. It’s one of the vital architecturally wonderful developments of the Sixties. The folded facade is particular, and there’s a exceptional high quality of area and light-weight contained in the flatsCatherine Croft, director of the Twentieth Century SocietyMaking high-rise brutalist properties and buildings match for objective within the twenty first century is sophisticated and costly — particularly within the wake of 2022’s Constructing Security Act, designed to keep away from a repeat of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fireplace that killed 72 by reforming laws for brand new and current buildings. Cladding has taken a lot of the headlines, with the Nationwide Audit Workplace estimating it is going to value £16.6bn to repair unsafe cladding on tall buildings in England — however the laws have introduced a pointy give attention to all high-rise buildings. Their destiny tends to fall into two camps. Scores of brutalist tower blocks have confronted the wrecking ball over time, together with at the very least a 3rd of Glasgow’s notorious “sink estates” and Poplar’s Robin Hood Gardens, an east London council housing property designed by distinguished architects Alison and Peter Smithson. However a handful of blocks have gained listed standing, together with, in London, the Barbican Property and Ernő Goldfinger’s Trellick and Balfron Towers. Catherine Croft, director of the Twentieth Century Society, which campaigns for the safety of buildings, says that Arlington Home must be listed, though a 2011 software to English Heritage failed. “It’s one of the vital architecturally wonderful developments of the Sixties,” she says. “The folded facade is particular, and there’s a exceptional high quality of area and light-weight contained in the flats.” In a press release final yr, Emin stated: “If this constructing have been in any European city or metropolis it could have been shielded from the start.” Making high-rise brutalist icons match for objective within the twenty first century is sophisticated and costly particularly since new laws have been launched within the wake of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fireplace The Arlington’s residents will doubtlessly be hit with a one-off restore invoice of round £5.3mn That’s additionally the view of many residents in a constructing the place the demographic has shifted, in some ways reflecting the gentrification of Margate itself. Whereas Moss says that the overwhelming majority of residents have been retirees when he moved right here in 2003, newer arrivals embrace youthful artists, architects and authorities particular advisers. On the 14th ground, trend photographer Oliver Marshall describes his west-facing flat “as a mid-century dream that’s second solely to residing within the Barbican”. Simply alongside the hall is Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, who runs the Arlington Home Instagram account devoted to a constructing, he says, that “speaks to a second of imaginative and prescient and optimism in Britain”. The flat he shares together with his accomplice, artwork supplier Mattias Vendelmans, boasts shimmering mirrored wall panels and Eileen Grey furnishings, and was featured on the duvet of World of Interiors journal final yr. And but, for a lot of, the narrative round Arlington Home is of spalling concrete, rotting home windows and derelict public areas — together with a ground-floor buying arcade the place the remaining joke store, doughnut store and tattoo parlour closed in 2009 to make method for a Tesco grocery store that by no means materialised. Tom Bradshaw (left) lives on this flat on the 18th ground together with his accomplice Jake Bland, amongst a breed of arty residents Bradshaw is the brand new head of the residents’ affiliation . . .  . . . and wears his Arlington Home tattoo with delight Some residents have lengthy been at odds with MPRL and constructing managers Highdorn, each a part of the Freshwater Group. In addition to tribunals over service expenses, together with a 2019 case that resulted in round £105,000 being refunded to leaseholders, there have additionally been disagreements round sustaining the constructing’s mid-century aesthetic. Final yr, Emin was a part of a high-profile marketing campaign to dam MPRL’s plans to exchange the unique aluminium sliding home windows with trendy tilt-and-turn home windows, which the artist argued have been “cumbersome, unsuitable and inappropriate” and would have “ruined the facade”. These grievances are coming to a head this autumn, with residents doubtlessly dealing with a invoice of round £5.3mn, which Moss alleges may imply a median of greater than £37,000 per flat — greater than some paid for his or her properties — to pay for vital points together with repairs to the outside and roof, and a defective fireplace alarm system. It’s a response to a Hazard Consciousness Discover issued by the Constructing Security Regulator and Thanet District Council earlier this yr.“The fees are unreasonable,” alleges Tom Bradshaw, an ecommerce supervisor who lives on the 18th ground together with his accomplice Jake Bland, and is the brand new head of the constructing’s residents’ affiliation. He factors to an estimated £1.2mn cost for scaffolding. “There’s a scarcity of correct communication, which is anxious for individuals who can’t afford the sorts of sums concerned.” Russell Diplock’s constructing opened in December 1963 . . .  … with a Carrara marble and teak foyer Arlington Home is much from alone as a brutalist block dealing with upkeep challenges and escalating prices. Refurbishments of Poplar’s Balfron Tower have been broadly criticised, with Croft labelling the end result an “ersatz hybrid”. The constructing has been within the information not too long ago for its two lifts breaking down, leaving some disabled residents stranded of their flats. “There may be typically lots of short-termism and lack of upkeep with these sorts of buildings,” says Croft. “They’re troublesome to organise and handle, and infrequently freeholders don’t perceive how one can sensitively sort out their very particular issues.”On the Grade II-listed Golden Lane Property within the Metropolis of London, by the identical architects because the close by Barbican, the quote for a mass refurbishment of the 559-home Nineteen Fifties property has ballooned from £29mn to £105mn; partly the results of extra intensive fireplace security and cloth restore works to satisfy Constructing Security Act requirements. With roughly half of the property privately owned, it’s unclear how the fee may be cut up between leaseholders and the Metropolis of London. Diplock’s sawtooth facade echoes the waves under and supplies sea views To some, demolition is the reply. Alongside a report final yr on the UK’s high-rise buildings by the Coverage Change think-tank, journalist Peter Hitchens questioned the “rash and much-regretted tower-block frenzy of the Sixties”, saying that his instinctive response was to “pull [tower blocks] all down if I may”, earlier than conceding that one other method was doable. Create Streets, a analysis institute and think-tank based by Nicholas Boys Smith, has lengthy argued that London’s excessive rises must be changed with low-rise terraced properties.However there are additionally examples of well-received repurposing tasks. Developer City Splash has twice been nominated for the Stirling Prize, in 2013 and 2024, for its formidable regeneration of Sheffield’s huge Park Hill property, which is listed. Initially in-built 1961 with 1,160 dwellings impressed by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, a two-phase venture costing greater than £100mn has remodelled a lot of the property, including pupil lodging, workspaces and area for companies together with a nursery and café.Residents David and Elizabeth Walker are energetic within the marketing campaign to guard Arlington Home: ‘It’s such a crisp architectural assertion, much more so as a result of it feels barely misplaced’ At Arlington Home, there could also be little hope for a change of itemizing standing — although whether or not that will be a blessing or a curse stays doubtful given the bounce in prices typically concerned in sustaining a listed constructing. However there’s at the very least a way of momentum behind an more and more passionate and motivated group of residents — who’ve taken on their very own function as a quasi safety committee.  David and Elizabeth Walker are among the many constructing’s extra energetic residents. They met whereas working at an structure agency, and have lived on the sixteenth ground since 2017, having fun with the “The place’s Wally?”-esque scenes across the station under nearly as a lot because the sunsets. In response to Tracey Emin, ‘If this constructing have been in any European city or metropolis it could have been shielded from the start’  With expertise of contracting for main architectural tasks, they’ve not too long ago been digging into the small print of the £5.3mn quote, together with the potential for utilizing mast climbers — platforms that transfer up and down a vertical mast, and would have much less of a visible affect than scaffolding — for the outside works. Home & House UnlockedDon’t miss our weekly e-newsletter, an inspiring, informative edit of the information and traits in world property, interiors, structure and gardens. Join right here.Like so many at Arlington Home, they’re spurred on by a love for the constructing. “It’s such a crisp architectural assertion, much more so as a result of it feels barely misplaced,” says David. “A number of the individuals who hate it have by no means been inside. It’s not simply the sunshine within the flats that we love, however the actually attention-grabbing combine of people that dwell within the constructing. The WhatsApp group can get spicy, nevertheless it’s typically such a pleasant and supportive neighborhood.“It’s exhausting to not think about what it may very well be like if it have been correctly refurbished, and proven some love,” he provides, noting {that a} clear may see the constructing returned to its unique white. “It may very well be a real icon, in all the appropriate methods.”     MPRL/Highdorn didn’t reply to requests to remark Discover out about our newest tales first — observe @ft_houseandhome on Instagram