1-187A O'Donnell Court And 1-212A Foundling Court And Renoir Cinema And Shops (The Brunswick Centre) And Basement Car Park And Attached Ramps And Steps And Studios

A pioneering megastructure on the west side of Brunswick Square, comprising two linked blocks of 560 flats known as O'Donnell Court and Foundling Court, incorporating rows of shops at raised ground level over basement car parking on two levels, with attached workshops, ramps, steps and studios. Built between 1967 and 1972 by Patrick Hodgkinson for Marchmont Properties and the London Borough of Camden, completed by L Brian Ingram and T P Bennett and Partners. The initial scheme was prepared between 1960 and 1963 with Sir Leslie Martin, with a subsequent scheme developed between 1963 and 1965 by Hodgkinson and modified between 1966 and 1968, assisted by F D A Levitt, A Richardson, D Campbell and P Myers. The engineers were McAlpine Design Group, with Robert McAlpine and Sons as the builders.

The structure is of reinforced concrete, some now painted as was always intended, with glazed roofs to part of each flat and flat roofs elsewhere. The flat roofs over the shops form terraces serving the flats, on which small professional studios are placed.

The complex comprises two 'A-framed' blocks linked by a raised podium containing shops and a cinema, set over a two-level basement car park. The outer or perimeter range is five storeys, whilst the inner or main range rises to eight storeys. Most flats on the upper floors contain one or two bedrooms, with some studios at the ends. All flats feature a glazed living room extending onto a balcony, which form a stepped profile down the side of the building. Further flats of varying sizes occupy the lower floors of the perimeter blocks.

The raised ground floor contains a shopping mall, whose projecting form creates two terraces above, linked by a bridge added in the early 1990s when steps from the mall were blocked. The professional chambers, originally intended for uses such as doctor's surgeries, are now leased as offices and workshops. The cinema faces Brunswick Square and descends two levels into the basement; it was originally a single screen but has since been subdivided. The basement provides two levels of car parking.

The elevations are determined by the plan, with metal windows and metal balustrading to concrete balconies. Mullions conceal basement ventilation. Regularly spaced lift-shafts, staircases and ventilator towers are reminiscent of Antonio Sant'Elia's 1914 scheme for Milan Railway Station. The formal entrance to the shopping mall opposite Brunswick Square recalls these comparisons, with the framework of the structure left open except for the cinema, which is largely glazed with glazed doors serving as a sentinel at the entrance. The flats are now entered via modern security doors, and the internal 'A'-frame structure is exposed, creating a powerful composition along the landings serving the flats. The internal finishes of the flats, shops and cinema are not of special interest.

The Brunswick Centre represents the pioneering example of a megastructure in England: a scheme combining several functions of equal importance within a single framework. It is also the pioneering example of low-rise, high-density housing in Britain, a field in which Britain proved extremely influential at this scale. The scheme grew out of a theoretical project by Hodgkinson with Sir Leslie Martin for West Kentish Town in St Pancras, and Hodgkinson's own student work of 1953, which was for a mat of largely four-storied maisonettes using a cross-over or scissor plan. In section, however, the Brunswick Centre more closely resembles Harvey Court, designed for Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1957, a design largely developed by Hodgkinson working with Martin and Colin St John Wilson. The Brunswick Centre developed the concept of the stepped section on a large scale and for a range of facilities, with a formality that was pioneering. It forms an interesting group of reference with the University of East Anglia, designed by Sir Denys Lasdun and Partners between 1962 and 1963, and Lillington Gardens, Westminster, designed by Darbourne and Darke between 1961 and 1966. More directly, the housing part of the scheme was taken over in 1965 by the London Borough of Camden, and Hodgkinson liaised with the Chief Architect, S A G Cook. His influence on the young architects working for Cook was profound, visible in schemes by Neave Brown, Benson and Forsyth and others built across the borough during the 1970s, which were subsequently celebrated and imitated on a smaller scale elsewhere. The most celebrated of these schemes is Alexandra Road by Neave Brown, built between 1972 and 1978 and listed grade II*, which repeats the use of concrete and the stepped building profile but achieves greater formality by concentrating solely on the provision of housing, set in a crescent.