The Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury, central London, with its cascade of glazed winter gardens, is one of a group of iconic concrete buildings that were erected in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s under the then-fashionable banner of brutalism.
Buildings such as Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower, Sir Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre, and the now doomed Pimlico School, have always divided public opinion.
You either love them or loathe them, but for the Grade II-listed Brunswick Centre there is hope of redemption, some 30 years after the first residents moved in. This summer, the centre will emerge revitalised from a £24m investment programme. Externally, the 394 flats, of which just over a fifth are now privately owned, are getting a face-lift. Self-cleaning glass is due to be fitted to the innovative winter gardens and the drab brown-grey concrete is being painted a pale shade of cream.
New shops, restaurants and bars will open in the pedestrian shopping street that runs through the centre, creating a much-needed high street for Bloomsbury to serve local residents, workers and visitors alike.
A new Waitrose, the largest in central London, opens in late summer, followed by fashion stores including French Connection, Oasis, Benetton and Hobbs. Cafes and restaurants will be allowed to spill onto the newly landscaped street: Starbucks, Carluccio’s, Strada and Nando’s are all opening branches.
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The two-screen Renoir cinema, one of the capital’s best known art cinemas, and a popular noodle bar, the Hare and Tortoise, are both staying put in the revamped scheme.
Patrick Hodgkinson, Brunswick’s original architect, is working with project architect Levitt Bernstein Associates on the regeneration project.
“The Brunswick Centre was a really ground-breaking scheme,” Hodgkinson says. “The ideas that underpinned it were far ahead of their time. It was planned as a mixed-use development with shops, some offices, car parking and flats, several decades before such schemes became the norm.
“Originally a private development, it was intended that there should be a real mix of tenants, everybody from wealthy individuals in penthouses to key workers employed in the local hospitals, but in the mid-1960s the flats were leased to Camden council and the planned mix didn’t materialise.”
Hodgkinson is hopeful that the Brunswick can at last become a focal point for the whole community in the way that he had planned it.
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“Even though the centre became quite run-down, it has always been popular with the people who live there. It is very central; you can walk to Covent Garden and the West End, and people appreciate that. A number of flats have been bought under “right-to-buy”, and I understand that when these change hands they are snapped up by young professionals who appreciate the architecture.”
Stuart Tappin, an engineer, and Isabelle Chaise, a writer, bought their two-bedroom apartment in the Brunswick Centre five years ago for £165,000. They moved from Brixton because they admired the beauty and boldness of the architecture and were seduced by the idea of living right in the centre of the city.
“It is still a building site, but with the cream paint now going on, it is beginning to look so much better,” says Chaise. “We would have preferred to see more independent shops in the shopping street, but this is not just a problem at the Brunswick, it is everywhere.”
Vicky Richardson, the editor of Blueprint magazine, and her architect husband, Adrian Friend, who bought their flat in the Brunswick Centre for £170,000 in 2001, enjoy bringing up their two children, Agnes, 5, and May, 3, there. As a young architect, Richardson’s father worked with Hodgkinson on the design of the Renoir cinema, so Richardson has known the building all her life.
“It was conceived as a megastructure,” she says. “This was a very 1960s idea: a single building containing everything you need for living — homes, shops, a doctor’s surgery, a children’s nursery and work spaces.
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“People bracket it together with tower blocks, but it was a reaction against them. It is high-density, but it respects the scale of the surrounding streets.”
The ownership of the Brunswick Centre is complex. The freehold was bought in 1998 by Allied London, a property development company, which in turn leases the flats and the communal areas and half of the 500 underground parking spaces to Camden council. Allied London has invested about £24m in regenerating the shopping street, with further amounts spent on a new CCTV system and environmental improvements to nearby Marchmont Street. Camden council is meeting about a quarter of the cost of structural repairs and repainting, and will spend £3.3m reglazing the winter gardens, which are such a characteristic part of the design.
Two key figures in the centre’s revival — Allied London’s retail director, Peter Cooper, and David Levitt of project architect Levitt Bernstein, who as a young architect also worked on the design — are both backing the revitalised Brunswick by buying flats in the centre.
Latest records from the Land Registry show that three flats sold last year at prices that ranged between £313,000 and £320,000.
Lee Matthews of Banbury Ball, a local estate agency, says there is a growing awareness of the merits of the Brunswick.
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“The flats themselves are well designed, light and airy,” says Matthews. “Every flat has a winter garden and balcony that can be accessed from the living room and the bedrooms. At the moment we have a waiting list of 16 people wanting to buy, but sellers are holding off until the work is finished.”