Primrose Gardens

When assigned to photo-document the Keeling house, my team members and I have also been assigned to conduct researches on the Primrose Gardens which is in Belsize Park near Camden Town. It takes on entire urban block, consisting of 4 different but typical types of English urban housing styles.

On the side facing the England's Lane, which is the main street of this neighborhood, is a row of 2 to 3 small size houses with individual shops and restaurants. In term of the scales, the grocery stores are incomparable to the flagship stores on Oxford street and the restaurant can hold only 10 to 20 customers at most at a time: these individual small business are only meant to serve the surrounding neighborhoods, not for the entire district or larger ranges. By providing basic needs and entertainments for the very neighborhood they located, these stores function as a community center efficiently bond the surrounding households together. The plants in the middle, I think is multifunctional and important to this neighborhood. It separates the two directions of traffic flow; it provides public meeting space for the local residents; it provide visual barriers for families living on the upper floors in the town houses.

Primrose Gardens and the central long green stripe.

On the northeast side is a row of conventional town houses of the Victorian era. At the first glimpse, the front of all the town houses look identical. However, under the seemingly universal facade design, there are two to three different variations in the design. The brick patterns, the style of the pediment on the doors and windows tell the differences when coming and looking up close. Between the two row houses is a long stripe of greenery along with a series of public space hidden between trees and bushes. The landscape design reflects the "Garden City Movement" initiated in 1898 in London. On its opposite side, the Belsize Park side, is a completely different scene. The first thing to notice is the size of a parcel of land is much larger than that of the Primrose Gardens side's. The housing type also changes from repeated town houses into independent 3-storey villas. Through the "slots" between the villas and the turning corners of this blocks we are able to have a peek of the rather complicated yet interesting collisions of the backyards of the buildings on both sides.

Primrose Gardens show us the adaptation ability of the traditional English row houses. The residents of the neighborhood can change the layouts (both in plan and section) as well as the program of the row houses according to the actual context situations. From the basic division of the lands to the variations in programs and finally to the detailed design on the front facade as well as the turning corners of the blocks, the freedom of space comes from the simplicity of structures. From Primrose Gardens I can even see the composition of neighborhoods of the entire London.