Historical photos of Palace Road Estate – designing the flats

This is part of a series of blog posts of historical photos of Palace Road Estate. This time we will look at some detailed models of the blocks of flats. These showed how the flats fitted within the topology of the sloping sites along Palace Road. Viewing the models from different angles helped the architects to understand how the completed buildings would look. A special camera could even be inserted into the models to show the view from within the finished buildings.

This beautiful model, carefully constructed from wood, shows one of the repeated units of flats, now know as houses – Ducavel, Baly, Ponton and Despard. Note the marker at the top left, showing the direction of north.

A similar model, viewed from Palace Road. This model includes the garages that extend below the flats.

A model viewed from the interior of the estate shows the consideration that the architects gave to the presence of the existing trees.

A camera inserted within a model shows a view as would be seen by a person standing on the balcony at the rear of the building.

A view looking along the balcony the other way.