These two buildings are located next to the main railway line from Euston, which runs along the North of the site, with the vast Alexandra Road housing scheme, designed by Neave Brown for Camden Council, to the West and Loudoun Road to the East.

When the area was first scheduled for redevelopment by Camden Borough Council in the late 60s, Tom Kay was living and working in a Victorian House on what was later designated as Site E, facing Loudoun Road.

There was a mews along the railway, on site F, with a number of workshops and garages. With redevelopment, the tenants in these workshops needed new premises, so he worked with them, as their advocate, to call for alternative accommodation from Camden Council.

In time this political initiative morphed to a design for the redevelopment of site E, which Camden Council commissioned from Tom. Thus, he changed from the tenants’ representative, to a Planning consultant and, finally, the Architect for the projects. A year later he was also commissioned to design the buildings on site F, where the original workshops had been.

As one of the entrances to the Alexandra Road housing is through the site, it was decided to add a parade of shops along the walkway, called Langtry Walk, running through the site (Lillie Langtry, the famous actress and mistress of King Edward VII, had a house in Alexandra Road, where one could see the obscured glass tunnel leading from the street to her front door). So the scheme became a mixed development, with flats and workshops over shops to the North, on site F, and housing over workshops to the South, on site E.

This was achieved by an intricate arrangement in section, in which all the accommodation has either direct access from ground level, or from a series of staircases.

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The following is a review of the buildings by Lynda Relph-Knight in Building Design magazine – circa 1985

Design Match

Tom Kay’s latest scheme for Camden calls to mind that cliche about fools and angels. Who, some would say, but a fool – or a very hardy character – would take on a site next to the much maligned and highly controversial Alexandra Road housing monolith, for the same client and with a housing element. Now the hoardings are down on Kay’s scheme, opinion is bound to run riot and comparisons are inevitable.

Kay’s design is for a mixed development comprising housing, shops and workshops. Located along the Loudoun Road, the scheme is divided into two basic units.

The larger of these, square on plan and stepping down the 0.13ha site, comprises mechanical workshop space on the ground floor with accommodation above. The accommodation is broken down into 10 four-person houses and 16 three-person flats. The second unit has a distinctive curve profile with overhanging upper storeys on the south face of the building. Here is a parade of six shops with two flats on the first floor. The second floor is given over to 12 craft workshops and studio space.

In spite of planners’ insistence that the scheme fit in with surrounding stock and Alexandra Road’s close proximity, there is hardly a whiff of concrete about the new development. It is a brick scheme and the choice of material contributes greatly to its visual success. The colours are good and the detailing excellent. Take, for example the sculpted stairwell designed to house the external spiral access stair to the craft workshops, or the setting of the precast concrete frames around the porthole windows along the side of the housing blocks.

The whole is lifted by rust red paintwork on rails and window frames.

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