‘A place in London’s future’: A Clockwork Orange, Thamesmead and the urban dystopia of the modernist large-scale plan

Abstract

In 1984 the Greater London Council produced a promotional video for the residential, commercial and industrial development of Thamesmead, which is situated on the south bank of the River Thames roughly twelve miles east of central London. This infomercial features a series of images of open and undeveloped land joined by dissolves: the sun breaking through a cloudy sky; a straw-covered field abutting a small stand of trees; a still pond surrounded by woods. A narrator describes in voiceover the land’s previous occupation by the Woolwich Arsenal during World War II, as the images gradually shift to photographs of that decaying facility’s ruins. ‘Who then could have foretold what the future held?’, the narrator asks, as the video moves through dissolving images of a family strolling through a sunlit wood while a hopeful piano- and woodwind-driven score begins to play in the background. ‘Thamesmead’, he finally intones over an aerial shot of a robust urban development, as yet another dissolve brings the video to an image of one of Thamesmead’s angular and sculptural concrete linear housing blocks – its most famous architectural elements – overlaid by a title card bearing the project’s slogan, ‘A Place in London’s Future’. The tenor is undoubtedly one of hope, with Thamesmead depicted as providing the chance for a new beginning in an almost pastoral small town. However, by the time of the video’s production in 1984, Thamesmead had already been inhabited for sixteen years and under construction for even longer. The slogan used is thus doubly problematic: not only had Thamesmead been conceived of and marketed as a glimpse into London’s future for almost two decades, by 1984 it was already a highly controversial part of London’s past.