Photography and Modernity

Organs of Modern Housing Estates

The nursery and playground at Kensal House

Abstract

The 30-ies in England are well characterized by one particular phenomena: the establishment of Modern Housing
Estates. While the common understanding refers to their proliferation through the coupling with the newly
proclaimed services of gas, their functioning seems less related to their integrated theories of living. Several journals
reported extensively on the arrival of modern housing estates in and around London but few took into account their
growing acceptance being manifested through the spaces of play. While a good handful of critics doubted the
success of Modern Housing Estates in general, this paper would argue, that these outdoor and in-front of the door
facilities did not only demonstrate additional value but proved equally relevant as the integrated pump-houses. They
not only added but rather established new mechanics of modern living.
First, this essay will contextualize the early Modern Housing Estates within the Viennese School of Thought of
Catherine Bauer and Elizabeth Denby regarding the education of children, before analyzing the projects of Kensal
Rise and Churchill Garden as exemplary. It will, then, as the main focus, render in-depth an interrelation between
their geometrical layout and archaic forms in respect to their photographic reception. Speculating on the growing
decline of modernist playgrounds in regards to its limited journalistic attention, this essay will consequently state
the playground’s erasure not only as a factual but as a valuable loss. Modern times, the modern eye and the modern
depiction definitely contributed to assign the playgrounds of the housing estates an actuality in their own right.

1 Henderson, Nigel. Photograph showing a boy climbing a lamp post on an unidentified street, c.1949-c.1956
Photography and Modernity

Abstract x

Index x

1. Introduction x

2. The Playgrounds: Organs of Modern Housing Estates x

2.1. Childcare and Viennese School of Thought - Elizabeth Denby x

2.2. Kensal House - The Primary English Example x

2.3. Filmic, Photographic and Journalistic Reception x

2.3.1. The Film as Tool for Propaganda x

2.3.2. The Photography of Spaces of Play x

2.3.3. Reviews and Journals, from Play to Game x

3. Conclusion x

4. Appendix x

Bibliography x
Photography and Modernity

1. Introduction

The 30-ies in England are well characterized by one particular phenomena: the establishment of Modern Housing
Estates. While the common understanding refers to their proliferation through the coupling with the newly
proclaimed services of gas, their functioning seems less related to their integrated theories of living. Several journals
reported extensively on the arrival of modern housing estates in and around London but few took into account their
growing acceptance being manifested through the spaces of play. While a good handful of critics doubted the
success of Modern Housing Estates in general, this paper would argue that these outdoor and in-front of the door
facilities did not only demonstrate additional value but proved equally relevant as the integrated pump-houses. They
not only added but rather established new mechanics of modern living. Rather than considering these integrated
facilities supplementary, they were highly incorporated in the housing schemes. Therefore, they do not necessarily
function as mere extension but clearly serve from within. Playgrounds prove as valuable organs, without certain
qualities could not be established. Healthy and progressive living conditions only came to rise through the sheer
capacity of elaborated nursery schools, offering physical activities and accompanied growing of the youngest.
To situate the essay’s topic within the natural global tendency of housing sensibilities, the early Modern Housing
Estates will be contextualized within the Viennese School of Thought and the successful writings of American
Catherine Bauer and British Elizabeth Denby. Both, being their life-time active as social housing advocates and
consultants, earn greatest respect regarding the integration of children’s education into qualitative living and
bringing the notion of childcare to the core of debate. Through multiple publications both socialists demonstrated
observational strengths and claimed utter necessity for better living standards. To illustrate the theoretical
framework of childcare and to grasp it more concise, this essay will study the mindset of Bauer and Denby in
relation to the first physically built and holistically executed urban village in west London, namely Kensal House.
Not only will the example of Kensal House serve as a guiding principle to understand Denby and Bauer’s thoughts
but has to be understood as actively executed social consultation, where Elizabeth Denby was not only theoretically
influential but practically involved. As the main focus and objective, this essay will then, render in-depth the
interrelation between the geometrical layout and archaic forms in respect to their photographic reception. General
project-relevant informations, formal issues, photo-technical limits, journalistic extravaganza and filmic receptions
will help us in sketching the possibilities and successes of photography per se. The curve will be analyzed as framing
device, the human protagonist identified as stage actor transporting messages and the film as media acknowledged
intelligible as promoting a healthy lifestyle. Modern times, the modern eye and the modern depiction definitely
contributed to assign the spaces of play within modern housing estates an actuality in their own right.
Photography and Modernity

2. The Playgrounds: Organs of Modern Housing Estates

Playgrounds can be found in various conceivable forms, differing in size, distinguishing in accessibility and
identifying through ever more criteria. In order not to loose ourselves in the vast existence of all spaces of play, this
essay narrows the possible choices down by focusing on playground facilities which are intrinsically linked to the
housing estate. This choice does not only ensure a higher gravity of the case study but allows to position the topic
within the broader discussions about childcare. Playgrounds per se inevitably inherit the potential to be valuable
extensions to housing estates but the immediate connection with the very issues of education and the integration of
these very facilities within the building scheme opens the possibility to acknowledge spaces of play the qualities of
being an indispensable organ.

2.1. Childcare and Viennese School of Thought - Elizabeth Denby

As the Modern Movement globally took off, its main objective was to set new standards. The movement made its
aim to increase the living quality and to raise health as well as safety. Not only was the phenomena locally registered
but internationally acclaimed. Whole Europe appeared as moving in the same direction, setting similar goals and
bundling immense forces to achieve better housing conditions. While some turned out to be more influential than
others, one school of thought which stood out in particular, was the Viennese School of Thought. Both, American
social housing consultant Catherine Bauer as well as British housing advocate Elizabeth Denby saw notably the
between 1927 and 1930 built Karl-Marx Hof in the 19th district of Vienna as a primary and utterly successful
example of including various facilities within one bigger housing scheme. Besides almost 1.400 apartments, the
premise offered around 127.000 square meters of gardens and play areas and incorporated amenities such as baths,
kindergartens, a library, laundromats as well as several doctor and business offices.
Elizabeth Denby studied Social Science before working and volunteering for several social housing organizations,
including Kensington Council, and fostering her interest in raising the living conditions for the working class. It was
her initial involvement in the theories which led her, after years of volunteering, to take on a more active role in
improving the worker’s life by constructing new housing. And it is Denby’s promotion of the Urban Village2, she sees
in examples, such as the Karl-Marx Hof, in order to accommodate the needs for large families. In her treatise Europe
Rehoused, Denby studied slum clearance policies in various countries to find informations for an influential and
progressive study of social housing. It was, in fact, the child-centered estates that should change how people perceive
themselves and to regenerate not only the town but lifestyles which were previously marked by poverty.
At the same time as Denby, there was another actor propelling these discussion globally. Here thoughts are
nevertheless important, do they derive their observations from mainly European countries. The American
Catherine Bauer Wurster was life-long an advocate fighting in her publication Modern Houses for bettering the
housing conditions. In analyzing the conditions of Red Vienna, Bauer saw Karl-Marx Hof as the primary example for
large working families.

2.2. Kensal House - The Primary English Example

With the rise of general awareness towards living standards, the fighting of poor housing conditions, the progressing
theoretical debate about social care, the topic of educational sensibility and support for the young started to mature.
As this essay already briefly mentioned the role overall European dynamics played and which examples were
exceptionally gifted to be elaborated further, it was Elizabeth Denby taking up a significant role in transplanting the
ideas into Britain culture and housing practice. Her contribution to the Kensal Rise, despite the fact that Max
Frywell at certain times denied her input, is utterly valuable. It can be acknowledged to her, that the fertile ground of
the educational debate was hitting the ground with the most profound attitude making it difficult to simply
disappear anytime soon. The integral capacity and exceptionally close involvement in the building proposal for
Kensal House, where Denby was besides Frywell and four other team members part of the design team, seems
groundbreaking. The formal integration of spaces of play, rooms for air, only found roots through its immediate link
to the programmatic planning of the housing facilities and the sincere integration of the nursery school, setting up
not an additional value to the housing estate, but seeing it as inevitable facility of the estate to function. Its
dependence to the educational realm and its relying to its productivity made the nursery school and the playground

2 Denby, Europe Rehoused

Photography and Modernity

not only a place for activity but an ultimate organ. Kensal House is the first built Urban Village and tried to make use
of Denby’s European observations of how to face english slum clearance with professional care and effective
promises for the working class. The project was handed over by the Gas Light and Coke company being the holder
of the plot, the investor of the project and, as we will see in the coming passages, the supporter of widespread media,
shaping therefore not only the physical building but even equally its reception.

2.3. Filmic, Photographic and Journalistic reception

One of the main concerns of this essay is undoubtedly the close interrelation between the formal manifestation and
its different media’s reception. How are ideas, which refer to the highly programmatic function, best communicated
through photography or even film? And what is the linkage to childcare per se?
The topic of the Viennese school is the main theoretical framework, undermining the idea of healthy living but the
very act of photography shall help to communicate this idea. While it was an extraordinary effort to find general
shape and exact form realizing Denby’s social observations and proclamations, it posed even more challenges to
depict it photographically.
What further enriches the complexity of the physical form and the following imagery is the close history which
shaped the round crescent and forms the core of the estate, not only formally but also programmatically,
ideologically as well as atmospherically.

2.3.1. The Film as Tool for Propaganda

Analyzing the success of Kensal House per se, one needs to be informed about the underlying operational system,
the affordability, the ideology and the public reception. Kensal House was one of the first Modern Housing Estates
in and around London, and the very first one including several apartments, split up in a few blocks and integrating
several facilities. The main protagonist for this remarkable endeavor is for sure the Gas, Light and Coke company,
which owned the plot, offered the site, helped financially and used it commercially. Not only did the Gas, Light and
Coke company generate by this very generous and supportive act an immense value for the innumerable people who
were cleared from their slums and relocated towards different regions within, around and outside the city but seized
the chance to strongly promote themselves. Not only is this act seen in several one-pages ads distributed in various
newspapers and journals but even more so manifested in their privately produced short film. The meticulously
elaborated and the seemingly novel film offered not only filmic sequences of daily life but a stage to communicate a
highly sanitized project. It was directed not only towards its current or future inhabitants but to society in general.
Indeed, what the film does convey is the daily rhythm and its operational quality. Scenes of the family as well as
activities of children contribute to a highly humanized depiction of Modern Housing Estates. The sensibility and
care towards the crucial aspects of education are meticulously staged and sincerely convincing. The good-will is
clearly readable and the operability imagine-able. Not only does the film portray the daily benefits of the new
apartments but comes not short in framing its value also symbolically. Especially the closing scene, depicting the
roofs chimney’s being clean and free of steam contribute to the message Gas, Light and Coke company is eager to
tell. The gas is the energy condition of the very time and the Modern Housing Estate’s success tightly bound to it.
While the planning sensibility was definitely given, it was almost counteracted by effective propaganda from the
investors side. The positive connotative conception was used to position the Gas, Light and Coke company on the
liberal side of society. Several frames indicated the high degree of incorporation of the children, depicting nursery
school throughout the entire film. The liveliness demonstrates the flexibility of unfolding and growing various
personalities. It is the community of children which seems the main protagonist of the movie and their various
activities which foster their belonging-together. The camera varies in close and distant viewings to oscillate between
more intimate and mere objective portraits of the Urban Village. Scenes of children brushing teeth, eating meals and
working out physically are set in contrast to childish wrangling and games of football. Activities of daily life are
intermingled with activities of play, even in the short film.

2.3.2. The Photography of Spaces of Play

While photographic depiction of the arrival of Modern Housing Estates in Britain is present in abundance, the
aspect of care was only seldomly the focus of frame. Plenty of imagery was produced capturing the bold forms, hard
Photography and Modernity

contrast of colors and clear distinction to the surrounding, but only a very few attempts were made conveying not
only the formal but also programmatic relations between estate and education. This can mainly be traced back to the
novelty of the design integrity and the difficulty of capturing programs photographically, but already in respect to
Kensal House, albeit being rare in number, some intriguing imagery was produced. To find these sparkling
moments, one have to look close though. Several key aspects render themselves visible only through careful study.
Being now packed with the most elemental informations regarding the underlying dynamics of Kensal House it gets
easier to find not only formally access but also content-based discussion regarding the produced photographs. The
linkage gets apparent not only through its compositional configuration but inherent strategy. One can now better
understand the position of the photographer and the message he had in mind to formulate.
Studying various images one can sense the incorporation of the nursery school as form of facility within the bigger
building complex per se. The round shaped crescent not only deals with the historical baggage and shapes the site’s
center but was used artistically to composite the imagery graphically. So did the formal expression of the curve not
only help to depict the object more organically but to use its incompleteness in order to frame it in a way which
actually establishes exactly this. The framing of the image brings forth the graphic qualities and the mental capacity
the motive of the curve brings with it. In pictures (1) and (2) the image is flattened by a narrow lens to achieve a
higher gradation of nursery to playground (1) or nursery and apartment block (2). The image evokes, through its
flatness, a sense of belonging but keeps through its formal composition and hard contrasts a graphic quality, which
almost eliminates the spatial distance which actually would differentiate the nursery from its surrounding. While in
picture (1) and (2) the curve is exploited mentally, in picture (3) we can sense the bending of the apartment filling
the entire image, the object wrapping around the subject, without the effort of moving the viewpoint. It is here that
we can realize organic form as helpful guide when depicting architecture. While these observations seem to have
almost nothing to do with the underlying topic of childcare we can see by closer examination the dependence on the
human as protagonist. Does in picture number (1) illustrate the children the function of the open space and indicate
the programming of the curved crescent, do we appreciate in picture (3) the mum’s with the new-born children on
their balcony looking out on the vast space of play. Even here, in this allegedly architectural depiction an indication
of the broader use of these apartments and the close linkage to the nursery school, or at least the outdoor amenities,
are given.

2.3.3. Reviews and Journals, from Play to Game

Do we analyze the journalistic activity promoting and communicating Kensal House to the public one thing gets
apparent: that Kensal House evoked a wide range of journalism which spans from commercial ads and photographic
essays, to extended texts framing and celebrating its success. Although journalism was highly attentive to the arrival
of Modern Housing Estates the integrated School of Thought played less a role in the photographic and journalistic
reception. Here one can find the mere visuals Modern Architecture in general started to convey. Being seen as
loosened from traditional ties and setting up contrasts to the surrounding neighbors, the white color and the blocks
exteriors played a major role in the visual and textual reception. So can it be explained that for example in the RIBA
journals, the nursery school is depicted next to interior shots of the kitchen and living room, declaring it first of all
as a space for women, which can also be argued through the form, and the school as part of the internal functioning
more then the architectural language. While the first pages of the March issue 1937 demonstrate the modernist
architectural language the latter one’s deal with the inner organs. This can be sensed not only through the choice of
imagery but even understood by the accompanied text. In another brochure, the Kensal House: a contribution to
new London, the child-friendliness is not only demonstrated through the publication of the nursery school and the
depiction of several children within the images but the manipulated photographs which were not only disrupted to
set different focus but enriched by the use of color. Yellow marker was used on the one hand, to extend the frame of
the images, much in a way which was described while talking about pictures (1) and (2), and on the other, to
transmit a friendlier feeling and a more warm depiction. The accessibility of the project seems heightened and the
idea of humanism easier to be identified with.
While the project of Kensal House was published in several different ways, the use of imagery was clearly limited.
Some classic shots were used over and over and simply reorganized in various layout to achieve desired effect. We
can therefore sense that while the photographic reception of the nursery school and the children playing was rare,
that the soft aspect of social science still had to fight for acceptance. The fact, that only a small number of images is
existing does not necessarily convey that the project in general was denied but only points out that the involvement
of women, the acknowledging of women and the acceptance of architecture being more then just mere form still had
to mature.
Photography and Modernity

3. Conclusion

One can see the journalistic practice and scholarly enthusiasm which promoted aspects of childcare internationally.
But what it does not tell us is the utter success or ultimate failure of several following Modern Housing Estates. What
can be suspected is the fact that the majority of the successful housing projects had a close linkage between outdoor
facilities which served as internal commodity, therefore never ended up being mere extension but intrinsic aspect.
To conclude, it can be said, that the aspect of care is in inseparable part of transporting ideas of modern living in
Britain and Europe of that time in general. While some of them ultimately failed to prove themselves as organ,
several of them and in particular most of the ones which where intrinsically linked managed to live up to their
expectations.
While the history and the narrative of Kensal House is rich in source, it gets even more excited when holding up this
vast amount of information against the photographic, journalistic and filmic studies of the project. We now know
about the factual complexities, the initial intentions and inherent qualities and understand that the realm of
photography not only objectively depicted the projects content but used it for legitimization, for compositional
inspiration and formal operation. The present dynamics and existing forms were artistically used and masterly
crafted to convey the full potential of the Urban Village. One can sense the propagandistic use of the film, the
sanitized version of family lives, the commercial understanding of wealthy investors, the commercial potential of
politically liberal attitudes, the slow shift to a broader understanding of architecture per se, a slow appreciation of
Modern Housing Estates and the graphic potential organic shape can bring with them. There is a manifold of
discoveries within the topic of Kensal House and if one would wish, there could be an even longer essay about the
complexities, the possibilities and the limits. Elizabeth Denby proved as valuable figure not only in establishing and
generating the successful integration of childcare but also mastered to be equally a figure of propaganda as seen in
the short film. It is probably her who the success of Kensal House has to be granted, do social science establish
themselves as more and more crucial within the architectural discourse. That this does confront photography with
new challenges is only to be welcomed, did the attempts of Kensal House already achieve satisfying and inspiring
results while being faced with severe difficulties.
Photography and Modernity

4. Appendix

Kensal House-Apartments, 1937 Kensal House-Nursery School, 1937 Kensal House, 1937, Edith Tudor-Hart

RIBA Journal, Kensal House, 20. March 1937

Kensal House: a contribution to new London, 1938, Gas Light & Coke Company
Photography and Modernity

4. Appendix

Filmstills from Kensal House (1937), Frank Sainsbury, George Aldridge, Gas Light & Coke Company

The Trellis Tradition Architect‘s Journal The Trellis Tradition

Architect‘s Journal The case for gas is proved RIBA Journal

Photography and Modernity

Bibliography
Bauer Wurster, Catherine. Modern Housing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934.
Denby, Elizabeth. Europe Re-housed. London: Allen and Unwin, 1938.
Denby, Elizabeth. Kensal House: an urban Village, in Flats: municipal and private enterprise. London: Ascot Gas
Water Heaters, 1938, p. 287.
Leslie, S.C.. Kensal House: the case for gas is proved. London: British Commercial Gas Association, 1937
Yorke, F.R.S.; Gibberd, Frederick. Kensal House, Ladbroke Grove, London W10, in The modern flat. London:
Architectural Press, 1937, p. 199.
Kensal House: a contribution to the new London. London: Capitol Housing Association, 1937.
Kensal House, Ladbroke Grove: reinforced concrete flats and nursery school: good example of modern subsidised
housing, in RIBA Journal, 20. March, 1937, p. 500.
Kensal House, Ladbroke Grove: reinforced concrete flats and nursery school: good example of modern subsidised
housing, in Architect’s Journal, 18. March 1937, p. 466.
Kensal House, Ladbroke Grove: reinforced concrete flats and nursery school: good example of modern subsidised
housing, in Architect & Building News, 19. March 1937, p. 349.
Kensal House, Ladbroke Grove: reinforced concrete flats and nursery school: good example of modern subsidised
housing, in Builder, 26. March 1937, p. 687.
The Trellis Tradition, in Architect & Building News, 23. December, 1938, p. 323.