A tale of two cities - two takes on modernist housing

The post-war period in architecture is fizzing with energy and ideas. Heavily damaged cities seek to rebound from their dereliction into the fantasy of the forthcoming machine age, full of new vehicles and technologies to organise and improve life. London council planning offices recruit young and daring architects, approving housing reflecting the cutting edge ideas at the time.

Backing out on to a precipice over a busy railway line, Neave Brown's stepped estate concept was not a rejection of Victorian terraced housing and street life, but an attempt at continuing it using the new medium of concrete. As important to Brown as the housing, was the associated green spaces adjacent, which soften the otherwise harsh aesthetics of the buildings here. Green and grey thrive.

A sloping green valley between Camden and Kensington. We will stop at a pub here for refreshments roughly halfway into the 40 minute walk between the Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate and the Trellick Tower.

Whereas the A&A Estate adapts the ground-level street, the Trellick Tower rises 31 stories in the air and translates the street into so-called 'streets in the sky'. Erno Goldfinger innovates in the shared use of common facilities, placing utilities and service equipment in a separate tower which supplies the estate via umbilical bridges. The underlying structure made open and adopted as design, provides long uninterrupted views on to the growing city. At night, the machine glows with coloured lights.

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