East London Audio Tour
Listen to Open City’s new on-demand audio tour of East London, showcasing ambitious public sector housing developments which sought to provide a better quality of life for residents across parts of the modern London Boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets.
Providing a safe and fun way for enthusiastic urbanists to explore the city in our post-pandemic era, this fun and engaging audio walking tour – led by up-and-coming historic conservation and preservation expert David Garrard -- follows the route of our popular real-life cycle tour exploring the architecture and history of East London.
Highlights of the East London audio tour include Britain’s first public housing development – the arts and crafts-inspired Boundary Estate in Shoreditch – along with Brutalist landmarks such as the semi-demolished Robin Hood Gardens by Alison & Peter Smithson and the Balfron Tower by Hungarian émigré Ernő Goldfinger.
Representing a series of prominent landmarks amid the rapidly changing townscape of east London, these unique locations will be brought to life to reveal the fascinating details behind their construction during a moment of unparalleled optimism and idealism for the future.
Listeners will also discover the extraordinary stories of diverse and previously overlooked architects who brought a fresh wave of talent and ambition to the design of public housing.
Listen along with the track below, and use the map to navigate to the listening point for each audio clip.
Click play to listen to the audio:
Navigate to the listening points using the map below:
Listening point 1: Boundary Estate
Architect: LCC Architect's Dept/Owen Fleming
Date completed: 1900
Client: LCC
Listening point 2: Keeling House
Architect: Denys Lasdun
Date completed: 1959
Client: MB Bethnal Green
Listening point 3: Cranbrook Estate
Architect: Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin
Date completed: 1965
Client: MB Bethnal Green
Listening point 4: Chrisp Street Market, Lansbury Estate
Architect: LCC Architect's Dept/Frederick Gibberd
Date completed: 1952
Client: LCC
Listening point 5: Balfron Tower group, Brownfield Estate
Architect: Ernő Goldfinger
Date completed: 1975
Client: LCC
This tour can also be purchased as a printed guide, so you can take the walk at your own pace here.
Meet the tour guide!
David Garrard is a Senior Lecturer in the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University, where he is director of the popular and long-running MSc course in Historic Conservation. Over the years he has held a variety of roles across the historic environment sector, at organisations including English Heritage, the Victorian Society and the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Having originally trained in philosophy, his academic interests concern the ethical and political-theoretic aspects of conservation and heritage practice – themes on which he is currently writing a PhD at King’s College London.
Born and raised in Manchester, he came to London in the mid-2000s, spent several years as a resident of the Barbican Estate (where he developed a strong love-hate relationship with Brutalist architecture), and now lives in Tower Hamlets. He joined the Open House team in 2014, and has run tours on the architecture of the East End and the Lea Valley, as well as on Brutalism, Art Deco and the Baroque.
