Brooke House

Brooke House is a 14-story block of flats constructed between 1960 and 1962, designed by Anthony B Davies, who was chief architect and planner to Basildon Development Corporation. Sir Basil Spence served as a consultant advisor on the town center design, and Ove Arup and Partners were the structural engineers. The building is constructed of concrete, featuring dark brown handmade brick cladding and aluminum-glazed screens and windows.

The rectangular building contains six flats per floor, arranged around a central access corridor and staircases at each end. A recessed rectangular entrance is situated on the ground floor. The block is raised 8 meters above ground level on eight 'V'-shaped fairfaced reinforced concrete pilotis, supporting a flat reinforced concrete floor slab acting as the base for the flats. The structure incorporates reinforced concrete structural cores and main crosswalls, with hollow tile and reinforced concrete floors and a flat hollow tile and reinforced concrete roof, all supported by a reinforced concrete pergola on the roof. The entrance is a visually understated glazed box with aluminum framing, recessed beneath the north side of the building. The north and south ends of the building have sheer, uniform brown brick cladding, flanking full-height recessed glazed staircases. The principal east and west facades are similarly treated, featuring flat, low brown brick spandrels above aluminum-framed windows with a shallow 'V' plan repeated across the block's width. Some interiors retain wood paneling in the living rooms.

A fully glazed staircase, connecting the ground and lower ground floors with a separate entrance, incorporates a fire escape staircase on the north side. The lower ground floor is accessed via stairs and ramps integrated into a dark red-brown brick retaining wall on the north. Steps leading down to East Square on the east side are part of Davies’ design, as is a ramp enclosed by cobbled retaining walls.

Brooke House was designed to introduce high-density residential accommodation into Basildon town center and to act as a dominant vertical landmark, counterbalancing the predominantly horizontal emphasis of the surrounding shops. The pilotis and the building’s forward siting relative to the adjacent building line to the west, combined with its facing of the sunken square to the east, give the structure a significant role in the townscape. Brooke House was named in honor of the then Minister of Housing and Local Government, Henry Brooke MP.

The building is linked visually with the Raised Pool and Sculpture in Town Square, and with the retaining walls, ramps, steps, staircase, bench, and raised paving in East Square.