‘Urban Village’ or ‘White House’: Envisioned Spaces, Experienced Places, and Everyday Life at Kensal House, London in the 1930s

Abstract

The aim in this paper is to consider several interweaving narratives on Kensal House, which was the first housing estate inspired by Modern architecture to be built in Britain, opening in 1936. The analysis focuses on the ways in which architectural theory and everyday life collided at Kensal House—which is situated in Ladbroke Grove, North Kensington, London—through a reading of the theories, ideas, and ideals of the designers of the spaces combined with the often neglected narrative of the intended users of these domestic environments, the first inhabitants of the block. The paper offers an analysis of Modern architecture from two contrasting yet often complementary standpoints, considering Kensal House both as an ‘urban village’, as the architects called it, and as the ‘white house’, as it became known by residents of North Kensington. Particular focus will be made on the ways in which people responded to the striking domestic modernities of these blocks. Whereas some conventional narratives seem to argue that the architects had an isolated set of views which were simplistically imposed on their consumers, the argument here is that the relationship was rather more blurred and messy, with a constant dialogue among the interested parties. The debates concerning these spaces are polyvocal, including many, often marginalised, voices in the historical narrative of Modern architecture. Consequently, what is produced here is a complex, and often contradictory, tale—a thick description of home.

Negotiating the Modern Cross-Class “Model Home”: Domestic Experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

“…The reception of the modern home has been studied through its material culture Clarke, 2001;Llewellyn, 2004b;Miller, 2001a;2001b;. We contribute by focussing on the spatiality of such reception, on how it is modulated according to the architectural affordances that the modern 'model home' represents.…”

“…Thus, the paper expands on a body of work that looks at the articulation of architecture and home (Attfield, , 2000(Attfield, , 2002Blunt, 2008;Busch, 1999;Chapman, 1998;Dowling, 2008;Jacobs & Cairns, 2008;Jerram, 2006;Llewellyn, 2004aLlewellyn, , 2004bLloyd & Johnson, 2004;Miller, 2001b;Munro, 2013;Rapoport, 1982;Ravetz & Turkington, 1995), with a novel focus on the spatiality of this articulation.…”

Materializing Memory, Mood, and Agency: The Emotional Geographies of the Modern Kitchen

“…His vision is to remove the wall that separates the kitchen and the dining room, seen on the left of What Stuart longs for is the type of "democratized" kitchen-dining space (Munro 2013) envisaged by some Modernist designers, such as Jane Drew, who aimed to reduce women's isolation backstage in pre-war kitchens (see Llewellyn 2004a). In these visions, the kitchen moved frontstage, the cook and their activities on public display (Munro 2013).…”

“…Following Hockey et al (2005: 135), who suggest that both objects and spaces have their own agency, I focus on the material culture of the kitchen and how these carry a sedimentation of significances (Hockey et al 2001: 755) that can narrate the untold stories of lives being lived (Gregson et al 2007;Llewellyn 2004b), those having been lived, as well as those that are imagined (Meah and Jackson forthcoming). This has, however, not always been the case and, in the next section, I briefly illustrate how these changes have been effected historically before turning my attention to each of my case study kitchens.…”

“…It is a topic that has attracted scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds: from feminists who have marked the kitchen out as "a zone of feminine subjection, where women must manage a ceaseless routine of work" (Floyd 2004: 62) to those who have taken a global perspective in providing revisionist histories of women's relationship with the spaces in which domestic foodwork takes place, among whom the kitchen has been reconceptualized as a site of resistance rather than one of oppression. Meanwhile, design, cultural, and social historians have explored how-in addition to the ways in which female subjectivity has been designed into kitchen spaces (Hayden 1978;Cieraad 2002;Llewellyn 2004a)-ideologies concerning nationhood (Buckley 1996;Lloyd and Johnson 2004), social class (Attfield 1995;Cieraad 2002;Hollows 2000;Llewellyn 2004b), and both production and consumption influenced the visions of architects, designers, and urban planners during the twentieth century Jerram 2006;Johnson 2006;Saarikangas 2006;Hollows 2008). Others have explored the ways in which the kitchen has been reconstituted from a "backstage" site of production to one of socialityin the form of the kitchen-diner or living-kitchen-accessible to and converged upon by all household members and visitors alike Munro 2013).…”