Neave Brown wins 2018 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture

Described on statement by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) as "the revered Modernist architect and a pioneer of quality public housing", Neave Brown is perhaps best known for his visionary 1970s Alexandra Road estate near Swiss Cottage built by Camden Council, in north London.

This famous project features a striking stepped concrete terraces and spacious flats, not only does it provide 500 homes but in Neave’s own words, it’s "a piece of city", containing shops, workshops, a community centre, special needs school, children’s centre, a care home for young people with learning difficulties and a 16,000sq m public park.

Brown believes every home should have its own front door opening directly on to a network of routes and streets that make up a city, as well as its own private external space, open to the sky in the form of a roof garden or terrace. Each of these qualities was incorporated by Brown at Alexandra Road.

Brown, 88, is the only living architect to have all of his projects in the UK heritage listed.

“All my work! I got it just by flying blind, I seem to have been flying all my life.

“The Royal Gold Medal is entirely unexpected and overwhelming. It’s a recognition of the significance of my architecture, its quality and its current urgent social relevance. Marvellous!” said Brown following the news he will receive the Royal Gold Medal."
 

Widely regarded as his masterpiece, Alexandra Road was the culmination of lessons learnt from Brown’s other projects including:

22-32 Winscombe Street in Dartmouth Park, north London (1965), a row of 5 terraced homes, designed as a private co-housing project for Brown and his friends. Winscombe Street was financially backed by the London Borough of Camden, as a prototype for the much larger public housing schemes Brown went on to design when he joined Camden Council’s architects department.

These hugely influential 'upside-down' houses placed the living space upstairs to maximise light, with self-contained, flexible rooms on the ground floor with direct access to private gardens. Brown lived in Winscombe Street for 40 years before moving to Fleet Road, another of his schemes.

Dunboyne Road Estate (Fleet Road), near Gospel Oak, north London (constructed between 1971 and 1977), consists of 71 maisonettes and flats, a shop and studio built for the London Borough of Camden.

Fleet Road was the UK's first high density low-rise scheme; here Brown reinvented the traditional Victorian London terrace as two and three-storey blocks that run in parallel rows with a central pedestrian walkway. Care was taken to preserve its scale and intimacy, and to create light-filled homes, each with their own private terrace and a shared garden.