The Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury is one of the most unusual housing schemes in London: two long megastructure blocks facing each other across a pedestrian shopping street, each stepping back in section like open books, their terraced residential floors overlooking the central arcade below. Patrick Hodgkinson designed it as a direct challenge to the point-block orthodoxy of the time — density achieved through section rather than height.
The centre was completed in a compromised form after years of negotiations, and the concrete was originally left unpainted, producing the raw grey exterior familiar from decades of photographs. A 2006 refurbishment painted the concrete cream, which divided opinion sharply. The spatial idea — the sheltered pedestrian street overlooked by housing — remains powerful regardless of the colour.