The Cranbrook Estate, which was designed by Francis Skinner, Douglas Bailey and their mentor, Berthold Lubetkin, was looking very fine this morning, part of the postwar slum clearance which Nairn so deplored in Bethnal Green, involving the loss of a big area of workshops and terraced houses:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Cranbrook represents some of the least inspiring Lubetkin (-inspired) residential architecture, in part the buildings themselves, but also the layout of the estate, which lacks a focus, and the variation in building scale has little impact. On the buildings themselves, I wonder if the green panels were posthumously added. Post-Grenfell it has been determined to be at some risk of a related fire.
Isn’t this a bit harsh ? It seems to me to have worn quite well and to nearly have the qualities it was originally intended to have (including, I think, the green panels). Charles
Perhaps. But one gets little sense of community or aesthetic appeal one finds on other similar modernist estates, such as Golden Lane or Spa Fields. But the residents past and present may demur!