Brunswick Centre

Selected by

Rebecca Salter, President of the Royal Academy

After graduating from Bristol Polytechnic Rebecca Salter lived in Japan for six years, including two years as a research student at Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan. While in Japan she trained in many traditional techniques and combines these interests with her main practice in painting and drawing. In 2011 she had a major retrospective at Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut and has also featured in numerous international solo and group exhibitions. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2014. In 2017 she became Keeper of the Royal Academy of Arts and in December 2019 was elected President, the first woman to hold the position in the Royal Academy’s history.
Location

Unit 57, Bernard Street,
London WC1N 1BS
Architecture

Patrick Hodgkinson Grade II listed. Opened 1972.

Redevelopment Levitt Bernstein.

levittbernstein.co.uk

The Brunswick Centre is a residential and shopping centre in Bloomsbury, London, England. It is located between Brunswick Square and Russell Square and iwas the site of a series of Georgian and Victorian terraces, deemed substandard and overcrowded by the council. It was designed by Patrick Hodgkinson in the mid-1960s, based on studies by Leslie Martin, and initially planned as a private development at a time when private, mixed-use development in the UK was rare. The estate was a heroic prototype for a holistic community, integrating housing, shopping, a medical centre, cinema and office space in a single development. Building started in 1967 and was completed in 1972.

Patrick Hodgkinson created a pair of layered terraces consisting of flats with glazed ‘wintergardens’, shops at ground level and car parking below. After failing to attract sufficient private buyers on time, the residential section was leased to the London Borough of Camden as council housing, while the developer retained ownership of the structure and shopping areas. The exterior was never painted because the Borough could not afford to complete work on the building after they took control. In Hodgkinson’s design, the blocks would have been painted cream, a homage to the Georgian-period terraced houses that previously stood on the site and those that still surround it.

By the turn of the century, the Brunswick was severely run-down. The concrete had been left unpainted due to cost-cutting measures and had badly deteriorated. Many of the shops were empty, the housing leaked, and the plaza at the centre was underused and neglected. In November 2002 a major renovation project was undertaken by Levitt Bernstein (who had worked on the Brunswick Centre with Patrick Hodgkinson) to restore, repair and improve the Brunswick. The shopping street was upgraded, and the landscaping around the scheme was totally overhauled. Now referred to as The Brunswick the centre contains flats, shops, cafés and restaurants, a supermarket, and a cinema.
Interesting facts

The actress/comedian Catherine Tate was brought up in one of the Brunswick Centre’s council flats.
Resources

c20society.org.uk
levittbernstein.co.uk
divisare.com

The Brunswick Centre © Lorenzo Zandri

I love the weight of it, the honesty of its structure, the interplay of light and the possibilities it offers for a different way of living.

While the concrete shows the signs of wear and tear the architectural detail is clear to see © Lorenzo Zandri

I grew up surrounded by Regency architecture (Cheltenham Spa) and in my innocence I loved the elegant façade. I’m not sure that I really thought about what might have gone on architecturally behind the attractive frontages. The relationship between the façade and the construction was not an architectural question that troubled me. The façades were a stage set – the backdrop to ‘promenading’.

Angular, architectural shapes in the stairways and corridors. © Lorenzo Zandri

A day trip to London as a student changed things. I stumbled across the Brunswick Centre and was smitten. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t think I reflected very deeply on why I was so taken with the development, but I knew that I found it much more exciting as a proposition.

The refurbished plaza at the heart of the Centre now beautifully redesigned and lit. © Levitt Bernstein

I wasn’t party to the debates and disagreements about what was demolished to make way for the Centre so I just enjoyed it for what it was and is – a massive sculpture. The Brunswick Centre couldn’t be further from a façade. I love the weight of it, the honesty of its structure, the interplay of light and the possibilities it offers for a different way of living. It feels as if the blueprint for a village from a long-forgotten culture has been adapted for the twentieth century and ‘dropped’ into an unsuspecting London streetscape.

It is no surprise that it had a frosty reception but it is hugely satisfying that it is now enjoying a revival. For some, I suspect the recent alterations have betrayed the Brunswick Centre’s Brutalist credentials but I am just relieved it is still here to remind me of an architectural epiphany.

I love the weight of it, the honesty of its structure, the interplay of light and the possibilities it offers for a different way of living.

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