Metro Central Heights - Elephant and Castle, London, UK




Architect
 Erno Goldfinger
Date Built
 1963
Location
 Newington Causeway, SE London
Description
Metro Central Heights is a residential apartment complex that overlooks the Elephant and Castle Roundabout in South London.  In July of 2013 it was designated as Grade II* Listed.   It occupies a parcel of land squeezed between the Newington Causeway and a railway viaduct, defined in the north by Rockingham Street and in the south by the New Kent Road. 



It comprises a series of interconnected tower blocks that surround a central courtyard.  It was built for what was in the 1960s the Department of Health and appropriately named Alexander Fleming House.



The development was designed by the Hungarian architect Erno Goldfinger (who went on to design the Balfron and Trellic Towers).  The towers of Alexander Fleming House were constructed of reinforced concrete with, apparently, flexible floor plans that lent themselves to a variety of configurations. 

The "Post War Buildings" website says of the complex that, "When Alexander Fleming House was completed in 1963 it received a great amount of critical praise. The Architectural Review described it in February of that year: 'The triple block of offices sets a standard of clarity and vigour and it is hoped the buildings that are to fill the still empty sites nearby will live up to it.'  ... In 1964 it gained a Civic Trust Award for its design. The buildings are set at right angles to one another around an originally public courtyard and provided occasional open spaces between. This was conceived as welcome relief for office workers and provided a great sense of openness at its base. The blocks themselves are built each with an exposed bush-hammered reinforced concrete frame with panel infillings and connected by glazed corridors lifted at ground level on piers. The facades of the blocks are characterised by projecting and recessed areas."

Unfortunately, it seems, the buildings developed a problem that became known as "sick building syndrome" and in the 1990s the civil servants moved out to new premises.  In the late 90s developers addressed the "sick building" problem and converted Alexander Fleming House into a residential complex of flats of various configurations and renamed it Metro Central Heights.  In the process they painted the concrete facades a creamy colour.
























In 2004 planning permission was acquired to add another block to the site.  Occupying the corner of the site on the New Kent Road and immediately adjacent to the railway, it was called Vantage Metro Centre (on the right of the image below) and it was sympathetic in design to its neighbour.  It was built on the site of another of Goldfinger's buildings, a brutalist Odeon Cinema, which, as the story goes, was demolished over night when it was rumored that it was about to be listed.