Berthold Lubetkin - Post-war

Post-war

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. Instead Lubetkin 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.

But the scheme marked a shift in British housing policy. To save costs, Lubetkin successfully made significant use of prefabricated floor and wall components. Less beneficially, the diminished social provision forced on the architects by the reduced budget would be repeated with far worse consequences across post-war Britain. And also beyond the control of the architects was a political statement. 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 his staircase. To this day it underpins the social heart of the building, perhaps waiting for a more promising future.

Tecton's work would also be a major influence on the Festival of Britain. However Lubetkin's efforts to gain employment with the London County Council (the authority with responsibility for building the Festival) were rebuffed.

Frustrated, Lubetkin spent increasing time at the Gloucestershire farm he had managed since the start of WWII. Though he failed to win several design competitions during the 1950s, he (again with Bailey and Skinner) designed three large council estates in London's Bethnal Green (now a part of Tower Hamlets). These schemes, the Cranbrook Estate, Dorset Estate (which featured the tower Sivill House) and the Lakeview Estate all made increased use of precast concrete façade panels while developing the idiom of complicated abstract facades and Constructivist staircases established in the 1940s.

Lubetkin eventually moved to Bristol where he lived with his wife. He campaigned in later life to protect the views of Brunel's Clifton Bridge; for Lubetkin, Brunel epitomised the spirit of technological progress which had first attracted him to England. In 1982 Lubetkin was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal. He died in Bristol in 1990. Lubetkin (with Tecton) was the subject of a travelling exhibition sponsored by the Arts Council of Great Britain which opened at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol and toured the UK and Europe 1980 - 1983, under the title "Lubetkin and Tecton: architecture and social commitment". This featured specially commissioned models and illustrative material from his archive and was designed by David King. He was also the subject of a Design Museum exhibition in 2005. His daughter, Louise Kehoe, published an award-winning memoir in 1995 which included previously unknown details of Lubetkin's early years.

In 2009 East Durham & Houghall Community College, based in Peterlee, named its theatre after Lubetkin in honour of the vision he had for the town. The Lubetkin Theatre was officially opened by his daughter Sasha Lubetkin on 5 October 2009. At the opening Sasha Lubetkin said: “I’m immensely proud that this beautiful theatre has been named after my father and that his work is remembered in spite of the brutal way it ended. He had such dreams for Peterlee, he wanted to turn it into the miners capital of the world. His respect and admiration of the miners made him want to create something really special that didn’t exist anywhere else but unfortunately that wasn’t possible."

The Royal Institute of British Architects established the Berthold Lubetkin Memorial Lecture, the first given by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando in 1992, and the annual Lubetkin Prize for International Architecture.

• Ove Arup
• Douglas Bailey
• Marcel Breuer
• Wells Coates
• Carl Ludwig Franck
• Arthur Korn
• Denys Lasdun
• Francis Skinner (architect)