Odham’s Walk

The purpose of the Right to Afford series is to open a line of debate and criticism on the current situation of Social Housing through the investigation and analysis of a selection of so-called “Council Houses”, which emerged in London throughout the twentieth century. To extract a global vision of the Serie and not the study of isolated works, we will go to parameters not only purely architectural but sociological and urban. El propósito de la serie Right to Afford es abrir una línea de debate y critica sobre la situación de la vivienda social en la actualidad a través de la investigación y análisis de una selección de las llamadas “Council Houses”, que surgieron en Londres a lo largo del todo el siglo XX. Para extraer una visión global de la serie y no el estudio de obras aisladas, se acudirá a parámetros no solo puramente arquitectónicos sino sociológicos y urbanos. There are moments in the city, usually produced by the absent-minded wandering of a Sunday walk where we run into places that inexplicably attract us, a street that winds until it ends in a square, a green wall invaded by vines, a shadowy hallway in a hot day. Anyone who was born or lived in a city of old Europe will feel identified. These places are nothing more than the result of layers with which History has been shaping cities, narrowing them, twisting them, elevating them, in an urbanism that followed a more immediate necessity than an aesthetic planning. Hay momentos en la ciudad, producidos normalmente por el vagabundeo distraído de un paseo dominical en los que topamos con lugares que nos atraen inexplicablemente, una calle que serpentea hasta desembocar en una plazuela, un muro verde invadido por enredaderas, un zaguán sombrío en un día de calor. Cualquiera que haya nacido o vivido en alguna urbe de la vieja Europa se sentirá identificado.