The complex was completed in 1974 and designed in the modernist style. Over time – amid criticism of late modernist urban planning – it came to be regarded as a social and architectural failure. The book tells the story of its construction, social decline, the housing policies of successive British goverments, and its eventual demolition.

Against the backdrop of photographs from 2012 depicting the deserted housing estate, the author reflects on the utopian vision of modernism, market forces, and the nostalgia that aestheticizes ruins and erases the residents’ fates from collective memory. He criticizes dominant urban planning narratives that reduce social problems to design flaws, often ignoring political, economic, and cultural contexts. He also challanges the romantic perception of ruins as symbols of beauty and permanence, suggesting that ruins such as Heygate are the result of deliberate destruction rather than the natural passage of time.

The book is available only in Polish.

Krzysztof Koszewski, Ph.D., Eng., architect – an academic affiliated with the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology. In his teaching and research, he focuses on issues related to the visual nature of architecture, the communication of ideas in the architect’s practice, and the application of digital techniques in the preservation of architectural heritage. He is the author of the book “Obrazy Architektury” [“Images of Architecture”] (2019, published by the Warsaw University of Technology Press), in which he offers an in-depth reflection on the phenomenon of architectural imagery as a vehicle for ideas in the context of contemporary visual culture. In his research, he combines perspectives from architectural theory, philosophy, semiotics, iconology, and the anthropology of visual culture, drawing on the concepts of visual literacy and the rhetoric of the image to present a critical analysis of visual design practices within the context of image culture. His reflections on architectural images focus not only on their role as a technical design tool, but also as a complex cultural message with cognitive, persuasive and experimental functions. Krzysztof Koszewski is also a photographer who focuses on presenting his own view on the built environment. He is the author of numerous studies and scholarly articles, a doctoral advisor, and a popularizer of architectural knowledge, while also holding various positions at his home university. In his research and teaching work, he engages in a variety of interdisciplinary collaborations, drawing on fields such as archaeology, geoinformatics, electronics, graphic design, mechatronics, and the social sciences.

NowHere
Author: Krzysztof Koszewski
Book design: Agnieszka Prus
Publisher: National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning, Warsaw 2025
ISBN: 978-83-972374-0-7
Price: 120 zł
Language: Polish

Publication co-financed by the Minister for Culture and National Heritage