Peter Barber's architecture proves that providing social housing at scale without making the design mistakes of the past is eminently possible, writes Owen Hatherley as part of our Social Housing Revival series.

Once upon a time, everyone knew how to solve a housing crisis, or at least they thought they did. The solution was quantity. You can see the results of this numbers game, played all around the world in the mid-20th century, in the dun brick towers of the New York City Housing Authority or the prefabricated blocks of suburban Warsaw or Prague.
But if you want a particularly good picture of what that solution looked like at its least architect-driven, good places to begin are the south-east London inner suburbs of Charlton and Woolwich. Aside from some pretty esplanades of trees, little thought went into communal spaces or public buildings
Almost nobody has tried anything fancy here. From the 1920s until the 1970s, almost every single unit of housing built here was social housing, mostly council housing. In 1924, this was an area of dense, overcrowded terraces without hot water or inside toilets, riddled with damp and vermin, owned by exploitative private landlords. By 1974, it wasn't.
For over 50 years, social housing was the only game in town. Nonetheless, the trend for many decades here too has been away from social housing. Two large housing estates in the area, both erected by the London County Council using prefabricated concrete building systems, have been dem...