Arch2O.com

Arch2O.com - Architecture & Design Magazine
Neave Brown is an 88-year-old architect who has abandoned architecture for years. His designs in the 1960s and 1970s focused on high-rise social housing. In 2018, he was awarded the RIBA royal gold medal after 40 years have passed since the completion of his last project in the United Kingdom.
“It is an absolutely dumbfounding surprise,” he says, eyes wide with shock. “I am in a state of tiswas about it. I stopped following architecture years ago, so I had no idea there was this renewed interest in my work until recently. I thought my buildings were a curiosity of the past that people had largely forgotten about.”, says Brown.
 
Alexandra Road Estate in Camden, London. Image courtesy of RIBA. Neave Brown is the sole British architect who has all of his buildings in the UK listed while he is still alive. This acknowledgment arrives late after his professional career came to a halt because of all the negative feedback that hovered around his last project in Britain.
‘It was an absolute nightmare,”Â� Brown reminisces. “I couldn’t work in England ever again. And when Margaret Thatcher came to power, she swiftly destroyed everything we had worked for anyway, by scrapping social housing altogether.”Â�

Winscombe Street houses, photography: Martin Charles
The British architect designed three projects, in the UK, between 1965 and 1979 of varying complexity and scale...