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Neave Brown (22 May 19299 January 2018) Neave Brown: architect who transformed Camden dies aged 88. Camden New Journal, 19 February 2018. Housing pioneer Neave Brown dies aged 88. Dezeen, 10 January 2018. was an American-born British architect and artist. He specialized in modernist housing. Brown is the only architect to have had all his UK work Listed building:Elizabeth Hopkirk: Neave Brown becomes first architect to have all his UK work listed – 3 October 2014 a row of houses in Winscombe Street, the Dunboyne Road Estate and Alexandra Road Estate, all located in Camden.
In October 2017, he won the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects for his Alexandra Road Estate, which is now considered a landmark of British social housing, and is Listed building.
After graduating in 1956 and working in East Africa he gained valuable work experience in the firm Lyons Israel Ellis. Subsequently, he became an architect at the London Borough of Camden under Sydney Cook. (2025). 9781848222045, Lund Humphries. ISBN 9781848222045 Brown left the London Borough of Camden architecture department as continuous conflicts around the construction of the Alexandra Road Estate in Camden Town prevailed. After a public enquiry linked to overshooting costs and exceeding deadlines tried, unsuccessfully, to blame the architect, his reputation was nonetheless severely damaged in the UK, and for the rest of his architectural career he worked on often-lauded projects elsewhere in Europe. (2025). 9781848222045, Lund Humphries. ISBN 9781848222045
Brown and his wife brought up their children in one of the five family houses at Winscombe Street, which Brown designed himself. After his children had left home, he and his wife moved to a 2-bed house at Dunboyne Road Estate, a council estate he had designed, where as of 2015 they had lived for about six years. Asked "If money were no object, where would you live?" he replied "Here!"
At the age of 73, Brown closed down his practice and studied fine art at the City and Guilds of London School of Art (BA), before spending the rest of his life working as an artist.
Brown was diagnosed with epithelioid mesothelioma in June, 2017. He diedMark Swenarton, " Neave Brown obituary". The Guardian, 12 January 2018. Accessed 13 January 2018 peacefully at home surrounded by family on 9 January 2018 at the age of 88. He is buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.
National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/113) with Neave Brown in 2013–14 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library. National Life Stories, 'Brown, Neave (1 of 19) National Life Stories Collection: Architects' Lives', The British Library Board, 2014. Retrieved 10 April 2018
In the essay " The form of housing" which was published in Architectural Design vol. 37 no.9 in 1967, Brown gives an account on the driving principles behind the "changing attitudes" (2025). 9781848222045, Lund Humphries. ISBN 9781848222045 towards housing at the time, emancipating himself from the Modern Movement:
Instead of understanding the past as a mere ground for the figure of prominent modern towers the texture of the old is accepted as the context in which new is built, " existing side by side". He praises the nineteenth century streets as providing " immediacy of relationship between house and neighbourhood", and " the traditional quality of background stuff, anonymous, cellular, repetitive". (2025). 9781848222045, Lund Humphries. ISBN 9781848222045 Similarly the modern architect should provide concepts that " relate each house to its neighbour and to its open space, determine the desirable relationships between housing and the attendant functions" (2025). 9781848222045, Lund Humphries. ISBN 9781848222045 Furthermore, the modernist " isolation of the slab" (2025). 9781848222045, Lund Humphries. ISBN 9781848222045 has to be overcome again it is " the architect's job to structure the environment". Furthermore, Brown dismisses the idea of architecture as expendability and claims: " What we do now with both new and old is here to stay".
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