Keeling House is a 16-storey block of flats located on Claredale Street in

Bethnal Green Bethnal Green is an area in the East End of London northeast of Charing Cross. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the common land, Green, much of which survives today as Bethnal Green Gardens, beside Cambridge Heat ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England. It was designed by

Denys Lasdun Sir Denys Louis Lasdun, CH, CBE, RA (8 September 1914, Kensington, London – 11 January 2001, Fulham, London) was an eminent English architect, the son of Nathan Lasdun (1879–1920) and Julie ('' née'' Abrahams; 1884–1963). Probably his ...

and completed in 1957 as a cluster of four blocks of maisonettes arranged around a central service tower. A radical renovation in 2001 added a

penthouse Penthouse most often refers to: *Penthouse apartment, a special apartment on the top floor of a building *Penthouse (magazine), ''Penthouse'' (magazine), a British-founded men's magazine *Mechanical penthouse, a floor, typically located directly u ...

storey and

concierge A concierge () is an employee of a multi-tenant building, such as a hotel or apartment building, who receives guests. The concept has been applied more generally to other hospitality settings and to personal concierges who manage the errands of ...

service.

History

Keeling House was originally part of a larger public housing scheme that also contained a low-rise council block called Bradley House. The building was erected following the completion of Lasdun's two smaller buildings on Usk Street, Bethnal Green, with which it shares its 'cluster' design. These were all council homes. Lasdun was concerned that earlier

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

designs did not take sufficient account of what made neighbourhoods work. He sought to give residents a sense of place and belonging, replicating the good relations between neighbours which he noticed in traditional Victorian terraced streets. Each dwelling was a

maisonette An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ...

rather than a flat, similar inside to an

East End The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...

house. Unlike a flat slab or tower block, he designed Keeling House with four wings that each look onto another, encouraging contact between neighbours. Between the central lift tower and the front doors of the apartments, tenants had to pass communal 'drying areas' for laundry and storage, where he hoped that social interchange would be as natural as in the streets below. However, he also designed the homes for privacy; the

balconies A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or Corbel, console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Malta, Malte ...

face outward and do not look onto one another.From Here to Modernity: Buildings – Keeling House
at

OpenLearn OpenLearn is an educational website. It is the UK's Open University's contribution to the open educational resources (OER) project and the home of free, open learning from The Open University. The original project was part-funded by the Wi ...

Keeling House was initially popular with residents. However, it later suffered from the social problems that affected many council estates in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tower Hamlets The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough covering much of the traditional East End. It was formed in 1965 from the merger of the former metropolitan boroughs of Stepney, Poplar, and Bethnal Green. 'Tower Hamlets' was originally ...

Council closed the block in 1992, due to fears over the original construction quality. In 1993, the building was designated a Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

; it was the first example of

post-war In Western usage, the phrase post-war era (or postwar era) usually refers to the time since the end of World War II. More broadly, a post-war period (or postwar period) is the interval immediately following the end of a war. A post-war period c ...

council housing to receive this designation.Keeling House, London
at

Emporis Emporis GmbH was a real estate data mining company that was headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company collected data and photographs of buildings worldwide, which were published in an online database from 2000 to September 2022. On 12 Sept ...

.com Tower Hamlets could not afford to renovate it and in 1999 sold it to a private developer. It was converted into luxury

apartment An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ma ...

s between 1999 and 2001. Key features of the renovation include a striking glass foyer with external water feature designed by local architects Munkenbeck and Marshall, and eight penthouses on what had previously been the service roof of a 15-storey building. Lasdun, who died in 2001, visited the project and supported the plans including the addition of penthouse flats, but regretted that the building would no longer house the poor. The redevelopment won an

RIBA The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...

Award in 2002 and a Civic Trust commendation. Bradley House, however, was demolished in 2005. Its site was redeveloped by Tower Hamlets Community Homes, a

housing association In Ireland and the United Kingdom, housing associations are private, Non-profit organization, non-profit making organisations that provide low-cost "Public housing in the United Kingdom, social housing" for people in need of a home. Any budge ...

, and Hill Partnerships as part of a mixed-tenure development opened in 2009."New Key to the Future", ''East London Advertiser'', 19 November 2009, p.10. ''East End Life'', TH Council, 16 November 2009, p.33.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Keeling House
– Photographs and information about Keeling House.
RIBA Keeling House Archive
– Keeling House gallery at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Residential skyscrapers in London Skyscrapers in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Grade II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Grade II* listed houses in London Denys Lasdun buildings Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Bethnal Green Modernist architecture in London