The 48 hectares of South Kilburn is one of London's largest neighborhoods with post-war modernist housing: in the 1960s, the traditional Victorian quarter buildings, clearly delineating the street and courtyard, were replaced by a free layout with panel houses of different storeys. By 1980-1990, this territory began to resemble a ghetto, and taxi drivers refused to go there: a visit to a disadvantaged area is a dubious pleasure. Therefore, the goal of the massive Kilburn transformation project was to integrate it into the urban fabric - connecting with neighboring areas - and creating a modern, comfortable living space. The new development provides for an increase in population density, while all residents of the old massif are provided with apartments in the new complex: thus, the established community not only does not disappear, but also becomes involved in the process of designing and transforming the environment around.
The first implemented stage of this restructuring was
a three-block Ely Court residential complex that is a modern interpretation of the pre-war quarter. In order to integrate into the environment and get rid of the existing visual (and emanating mental) segregation, it was important for architects to restore the role of the street as the protagonist of public life: the most important thing in the quarter is the path to each individual front door. It is this path that is absent in such open-plan areas, so familiar to most Russians: street space is excluded from perception, it must be overcome rather than lived.
Strict geometry, materiality and tactility of planes opening at an angle, variable heights form the street and the courtyard, and deeply sinking loggias, protruding balconies, French windows and front gardens set the rhythm to the facades and create the notorious effect of "eyes on the street", that is, residents willingly or unwillingly monitor the space around their home, making it safer.
Fitting into the existing environment - Victorian villas, nearby Maida Vale, 1960s tenements, the center of the Salvation Army - Ely Court becomes an integral part of all this diversity, as if it had always been here. According to the authors of the transformation, this pilot project worth € 8.2 million should become an impetus for the development of the area, not so much architectural development as social development. Residents of new bright apartments with 2.6-meter ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows
they say they are not Kilburn at all, but the West End. They now have space. And freedom.
