Housing update

摘要

Central Westminster is about more than government buildings and the Abbey complex at one end and tacky retail around the great railway terminus at the other, counterbalanced by the nearby Tate Britain. This is where MPs, clergy and spies meet commuters and commerce. It's also about a surprising amount of housing. The backstreets range from early Georgian (especially around Thomas Archer's St John's Smith Square) to modern, but are noted especially for one typology: the mansion block. Some of the blocks are social housing, some are stuffed with the great and good, and there is a satisfying sense of shared high density streets. It is here that DSDHA has inserted a pair of new residential buildings that aim to reinvent the mansion-block genre.