I have, most mornings, been keeping track of two construction sites. The Brunswick Centre in WC1 is being refurbished. It opened in 1972 and is the closest thing you will get outside a picture book to one of Antonio Sant'Elia's Città Nuova projects of 1914. Two of those drawings are to be seen in Modernism at the V&A until 23 July. A couple of hundred yards up the street scaffolding is coming down on the other site: a new block of flats for the Salvation Army Housing Association, done in red brick with stone dressings in a style which matches that of the Edwardian blocks it abuts.

LRB 20 April 2006 | PDF Download