page_title: Berthold Lubetkin
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: Berthold Lubetkin / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: Berthold Lubetkin's staircase in Bevin Court, London, after repainting circa 2014
context_page_description: Berthold Romanovich Lubetkin was a Soviet émigré architect who pioneered modernist design in Britain in the 1930s. His work includes the Highpoint housing complex, London Zoo penguin pool, Finsbury Health Centre and Spa Green Estate.
context_section_description: The post-war Labour victory was built on the promise of modernism as pioneered by Tecton. The Finsbury Health Centre became a model for the new National Health Service. To confirm the significance of Lubetkin's vision, the Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan laid the foundation stone to Tecton/Finsbury's Spa Green Estate in winter 1946. Spa Green remained the flagship estate, adapting many features from the luxury Highpoint flats for working families (including lifts, central heating, balconies, daylight from multiple directions, and a spectacular roof terrace); in 1998 it received a high Grade II* listing for its architectural significance and the 2008 restoration brought back the original colour scheme. 
  
  Spa Green was the first of a series of housing projects for the practice including Finsbury's Priory Green Estate and Tecton's work in Paddington (led by Denys Lasdun) at the Hallfield Estate. These all showed a more decorative, patterned style which contrasted greatly with the Brutalist style that was soon to emerge as the dominant form of welfare state architecture. Ironically, however, several features of Lubetkin's 1940s neo-Constructivist modernism have become staples of postmodern architecture, for example at Spa Green the floating roof canopy, the stairwells marked by repeated clusters of square 'windows', and the acute-angled canted meeting lodge.
  For most of these projects Lubetkin and Tecton worked closely with Ove Arup as structural engineer. Arup's innovative concrete 'egg-crate' construction at Spa Green gave each flat clear views unobstructed by internal pillars, and his aerodynamic 'wind roof' provided a communal area for drying clothes and social gathering.
  In 1947, Lubetkin was commissioned to be master planner and chief architect for the Peterlee new town. The following year Tecton was dissolved. Commenting on this, Lubetkin wrote to fellow Tecton member Carl Ludwig Franck "that after the war Tecton was at best a ghost of its former self".
  Lubetkin's masterplan for Peterlee included a new civic centre for which he proposed a number of high rise towers. However the extraction of coal was to continue under the town for several years which posed a risk of subsidence. As a result, the National Coal Board (NCB), itself an agency of the Ministry of Fuel and Power would only consider a dispersed low density development. Despite investigating a number of options that would have allowed coal extraction to continue without preventing the proposed development, the NCB would not alter their policy. As Lubetkin was the employee of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning this developed into an inter-ministerial battle, and despite attempts at dispute resolution at cabinet level the difference in approach between the ministries remained.  Frustrated at the unresolved bureaucratic battles, Lubetkin resigned from the Peterlee project in spring 1950. The only physical sign of his involvement in the scheme exists in the adjoining opposed parabola forms of the road layout at Thorntree Gill.
  Lubetkin returned to Finsbury to complete (in collaboration with Francis Skinner and Douglas Bailey) his final project for the Borough, Bevin Court. Initially named Lenin Court the housing scheme was to incorporate Lubetkin's Lenin Memorial. Post-war austerity had imposed far greater budgetary constraints than in the showpiece Spa Green Estate, forcing Lubetkin to strip the project of the basic amenities he had planned; there were to be no balconies, community centre or nursery school. To save costs, Lubetkin made significant use of prefabricated floor and wall components. Instead he focused his energies on the social space. Fusing his aesthetic and political concerns he created a stunning constructivist staircase – a social condenser that forms the heart of the building. Before the building was completed the Cold war had intensified and as a result the scheme was renamed Bevin Court (honouring Britain's firmly anti-communist foreign secretary Ernest Bevin). In defiance, Lubetkin buried his memorial to Lenin under the central core to 
caption: Berthold Lubetkin's staircase in Bevin Court, London, after repainting circa 2014
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