The Brunswick Centre is a grade II listed residential and shopping centre in Bloomsbury, Camden, London, England, located between Brunswick Square and Russell Square.

Despite being widely disliked by those who are unsympathetic to modernist architecture, it achieved Grade II status in 2000. By this time, however, many of its shop premises were unoccupied. Plans for renovation had repeatedly been blocked by residents' committees but in November 2002, the much-needed £22 million work began. This included the painting of the blocks in their originally-planned colour and the commissioning of artist Susanna Heron to introduce water features to the central space. The major work was completed in late 2006 with the opening of branches of several high street chain stores and restaurants. The dual management has caused problems though, as the landlord restored the structure of the estate but the council is responsible for maintenance of the residential properties - so while the concrete structure was restored, the windows remained untouched, detracting from the overall aesthetic of the development. In 2007, the council started work on replacing the windows that has resulted in the residents having scaffolding outside their flats for the second time in just a few years.

Brunswick Centre (2015) in Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_Centre (Accessed: 25 April 2015)

Progressing from the void at street level I researched the large Brunswick Centre neighbouring the wall to consider the possibility of joining the two structures in some way.

Despite the Brunswick Centre attracting thousands of shoppers daily it also has 560 flats above with residents.

The lower shopping levels have been refurbished recently but I feel more could be done to improve quality of life living in the residential flats. 

The rooftop is an obvious space that development can take place and is perfectly located to join to the original site I began by looking at.

Until recently, the only people you would find in the Brunswick Centre were lost tourists and film-goers trying to find the nearby Renoir cinema. Now look at it: there are people here! Neat clusters of them, scattered about the open-air plaza, eating lunch, sitting at cafes, shopping or just sitting around talking. Such activity would be unremarkable in your average shopping street, but in the Brunswick, it's miraculous. The building has always had its admirers, but for decades this corner of Bloomsbury has been one of the most miserable places in London - a rain-streaked, litter-strewn concrete bunker of empty shop units, whose ambitious, space-age design only accentuated its sense of failure.

So what's changed? Very little, actually. One of the most remarkable things about the Brunswick's renaissance is how straightforward it was. In essence, much of what they have been doing is what the architect intended to do in the first place. The shopfronts have been spruced up, and a Waitrose has been inserted - but, most importantly, the complex has been cleaned and painted. The fact that this has taken some 40 years is a sad illustration of how politics, business and neglect can ruin a utopian vision. But the Brunswick's revival also suggests that some of British architecture's radical experiments in the 1960s and 1970s were condemned far too quickly.

By anyone's standards, the Brunswick is a radical building. It would be a great setting for a sci-fi movie, with its huge concrete frame, elevated walkways and stepped ranks of apartments with curious angled windows. It's such an odd building, variously called a "superblock" or a "megastructure". Its banked ramparts and soaring service towers bring to mind the fantasy designs of the Italian futurist Antonio Sant'Elia; but more commonly, the Brunswick's raw concrete and structural articulation put it firmly in the new brutalist school, alongside other ambitious structures of the time, such as Sheffield's Park Hill housing estate or London's Trellick Tower.

New brutalism is virtually a dirty term these days. It started out as an appropriately no-nonsense style for Britain's postwar, post-colonial identity - honest in its expression of materials, practical, populist and cheap, yet forward-looking. But rather than transforming Britain into a modernist utopia, new brutalism often helped generate the "crap towns" of the future, especially since it became the house style for welfare architecture.

Rose, S. (2006) Scrubs up beautifully. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/oct/23/architecture.communities (Accessed: 25 April 2015)