Today we’re celebrating some brilliant local buildings you really should pop out to behold

Did you know that the striking local landmark pictured above 👆 just missed out on the UK’s top architectural award last week?

But not scooping the RIBA Stirling Prize in no way diminishes the civic and environmental benefit that the Central Somers Town Community Facilities and Housing has brought to the area.

The centre’s clever mix of rough ‘n tumble-proof play facilities for kids (including rooftop footie!) and triple aspect, family-sized flats is the latest chapter in the area’s long history of visionary social housing projects.

Recent years have increasingly seen Council projects echoing the proud ambition of the 1970s, that brought brutalist icons such as the Alexandra Road Estate and the modernist take on an Italian hill town that is the Branch Hill Estate - albeit on a much smaller scale.

These head-turning new builds have gone some way to counteracting some of the more negative or failed erections, such as the long-stalled redevelopment of Bacton Estate in Gospel Oak, or the controversial luxury skyscraper Brill Place Tower, carved out of a corner of one of Somers Town’s rare public green spaces.

Here are a few more innovative new additions to Camden’s long social housing history that are well worth checking out, too…

• 🥇 Up at Gospel Oak, RIBA has already bestowed honours (in 2022) on the clever and curvaceous ‘infill’ housing at Kiln Place. Peter Barber Architects (BPA) designed 15 new homes on parts of the estate that were underused or wasted, resulting in an attractive expansion of the estate without the need for any demolition.

• 🏡 PBA were also behind the amazing cottages for homeless people (pictured above), that bring unique colour and form to Kentish Town’s former industrial marshlands at Holmes Road Studios. The units are designed to foster a sense of empowerment for residents while promoting gardening skills and create a real sense of community, earning 2021’s RIBA London Award in the process.
  

• 🖼️ If all this dynamic new social housing excites, then remember to stroll through the Grade II-listed 1920s Ossulston Estate, just alongside the British Library, to see where it arguably all began. The 100+ year history of such projects being innovated in Somers Town is also celebrated in the neighbourhood’s very own museum around the corner.
  

• 😲 Meanwhile, although all the flats might be privately owned, anyone with a property porn habit won’t be able to resist a look at Highgate Road’s The Arches. It’s a really unusual build on the difficult former site of a grim petrol station (and attractively set against another imposing social housing backdrop). If gawping from the outside isn’t enough, you can actually book to stay the night there as a ‘holiday’ home.

ENTERTAINMENT

🤣 6 comedians tell us about their worst (and best) ever times in Camden

You may remember Suchandrika Chakrabarti , the Have I Got News For You writer who we previewed back in the summer when she brought her stand-up show to Camden Fringe.

Now she’s back in the area, hosting a brand new monthly Tuesday night at Tufnell Park’s excellent joint Aces & Eights.

It’s called Good News / Bad News, and involves her inviting an all-star line-up of other comedians along to laugh/cry about their best and worst news items from the previous month.

It promises to be achingly topical, astutely well-observed and damn funny. Good news indeed.

So in the spirit of the show, this week we asked six of them to tell us their very worst and best memories of hazy nights and youthful days spent hanging out and gigging around the clubs and bars of Camden.

FOOD & DRINK

Restaurant rumours, hot kitchens, spooky parties

• 🥯 Yes, you guessed it, Camden’s bagel wars are hotting up again, as local stalwart Roni’s latest branch opened this week just across the road from queue-round-the-block sensation It’s Bagels on Primrose Hill’s Regent’s Park Rd.

• 🥘 The Kentish Town food empire that includes Mamasons dirty ice cream, Filipino bakery Panadera and ramen joint Ramo have done well at extending their cult brands into locations in Soho and the West End. The latest concept, Donia, is heading straight for Kingly Court, opening next month serving a Filipino fusion menu in the choice balcony spot spot where we once had this rather special meal and chat at the now closed Imad’s Syrian Kitchen.

• 🥗 Hampstead is to be the latest London neighbourhood to be graced with the arrival of the perennially popular Ottolenghi, as trailed in a less than cryptic video this week. His celebrated heaving colourful counters should be brimming with platters by Christmas.

• 🍻 American brewery in London, Werewolf, go huge on Halloween, and their full season of events (also their 2nd birthday celebrations) reach a climax this weekend into early next week, with special beers, cabaret and live bands under the arches at Camden Rd until Tuesday.

• 🥤Talking of parties, NW5 food pub sensation The Parakeet is having its very first one this Saturday, pushing the tables aside after 9pm for DJs, Halloween nonsense aplenty and £5 negronis, too. Free all night.

CAMDEN DIARY

This week: a more positive environmental encounter and the people-power of dancing

The weekly Camdenist column: observations and frustrations from living, working and playing in the borough…

FRIDAY: A day at Google on Pancras Square for the return of the annual Future of Greentech conference. After last week’s rather depressing Diary insight into the overwhelming office waste mountain, it was heartening to hear from organisations making strides towards solving some of the world’s epic sustainability shame. The session topics broadly covered renewable energy, the urgent need to address the impact of fashion and textiles, plus the rapid rise of impact investing. Organisers Camden Clean Air Initiative have helpfully added links to all the speakers on this post-conference reflection post, so you can dive in to discover more about tech that separates polycotton mix fibres, biological clothes dying, excitement at the engineering challenges of upgrading the National Grid to solar and wind power, and loads more.

SATURDAY: Time to check out new monster daytime nightclub Drumsheds up in Tottenham. With a comfortable capacity of 15,000 people (and space for double that) this really is a venue for all of London. Anyone who says nightlife is ‘tired’ or ‘dead’ in the capital needs only hit the dancefloor here for a few sweaty minutes to be proved happily wrong - even if it’s only just gone 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. Having said that, the picture for the wider night time economy is still in a perilous state, being crunched economically on all sides. Nightlife nerds can read the new manifesto, Darkest Before The Dawn, published this week by long-time Camdenist friends the Night Time Industries Association to see how things might be better supported.

While there’s a real battle on to save so much that’s special about our unique afterhours culture, small victories are being won. HERE at Outernet and neighbouring live music spot The Lower Third just became the latest Camden venues (and the only ones in Soho) to get a 4am licence, following on from Electric Ballroom being given theirs the other day, too. This bodes well after a protracted period of embarrassingly many years with the borough having no late-night venues to speak of. Meanwhile, the crowds throwing shapes in Tottenham’s old IKEA demonstrate the economic - as well as creative and joyful - firepower that well-run clubs and events of all sizes can unleash. Let’s hope the struggles of recent years ease, and this vital culture continues to percolate into 2024 and beyond.

WEDNESDAY: King’s Cross-based innovation district Knowledge Quarter have been a little low key of late, but that’s because they’ve been sorting out their most ambitious project to date - an 11,000 sq ft coworking, events and community space at Regent’s Place. With so much traditional office space still in a state of post-Covid flux, estate owner British Land are banking on the KQ bringing some of its members’ academic and technological heft to the area, as they refocus on life sciences now key tenant Meta/Facebook have moved up the road. What happens next is purposefully rather unpredictable, but with the retrofit of the hulking great Euston Tower just next door coming up too, the work/play landscape across this area is going to be transformed in some fairly interesting ways over the years ahead.

MUSIC

Three cheers! A trio of free entry gigs

• 🎙️Power trio The Daybreakers are throwing a free Halloween Special at The World’s End from 6pm tonight. Then, if you can’t get enough spooky-themed shenanigans, the first night of Camden Rocks Halloween Bonanza kicks off downstairs at The Underworld afterwards, too.

• 🎸 Ozzy-era tribute act Blax Abbath play a free entry afterparty for The Black Heart’s own Halloween bash on Saturday, upstairs at the pub from 11pm. You can, of course, also enjoy a ticketed night of top grindcore acts downstairs first too, for the heavy Halloween experience.

• 🎤 Monday (30th) sees the return of The Dublin Castle’s weekly Open Mic Nite, where aspiring talent can sign up from 7pm, and it’s free to get in for everyone. This week’s showcase set comes from Anelie, too.

Gig highlights in association with Halibuts.com

FREE TRAVEL - HOP ON!

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