Kate Macintosh’s Gentle Brutalism

In 1960s London, the architect Kate Macintosh designed great modernist housing for the elderly, still beloved by its residents — but how long can it survive?

A 1973 view of Dawson’s Heights from Overhill Road, to the east. (Photo by Robert Kirkman)

There are two public housing schemes in South London designed by the architect Kate Macintosh, both of which are still much admired to this day. One, Dawson’s Heights, is gigantic and unmissable — an immense brick castle on a hill, inspired by Macintosh’s native Edinburgh. She designed it in 1965, at the age of twenty-eight, for […]

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