rowley way

Over time, poured concrete corrodes in such a specifically ugly way that before long these buildings come to reek of the broken promises of the space age. A great example of this architectural disillusionment can be found in the Alexandra Road housing project in London's Camden borough. When it opened in 1972, this huge housing project, now known as 'Rowley Way,' looked like this:

Back when the style was new, I think it would be easy to love this building. After all, if Rowley Way hadn't been built in a poor neighborhood in northwest London, the 520-unit complex could have just as easily been built under a Fuller geodesic dome on the moon. For the first decade at least, this huge Logan's Run-looking board-marked unpainted reinforced concrete ziggurat probably recalled that great whiz-bang world to come that we were promised for so long. This is what it looks like now:

I think that after forty years of acid rain, concrete futurism recalls not rocket packs and romantic moon walks but Soviet-style scraped knees and tetanus and achingly long lines for bread and nylons.