The Guardian: "Architects hark back to Festival of Britain with 'vertical carnival'"

"The 1951 Festival had it all: the jaw-dropping Skylon tower, the Dome of Discovery and an unswerving optimism about the future. Now, International Architecture Showcase are reviving that energy, dreaming up plans for east London estates"

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"While today's Expos often leave behind curious wastelands dotted with rotting pavilions and coloured tarmac, occasionally garnished with clusters of private flats, it is heartening to remember that things were not always thus. The Dome of Discovery from the 1951 Festival of Britain may be long gone, the Skylon long lost at the bottom of the river Lea, but in Poplar, east London, the council houses of the Lansbury estate, built as part of the festival's Live Architecture Exhibition, are still very much standing.

"... What might have looked cheap in 1951 appears a model of quality to today's eye, such is the nostalgia for an age when the London county council readily built 30 acres of new homes in decent, robust materials.

Arranged as a series of neighbourhood groups, the estate comprised two- and three-storey terraces and maisonettes in London stock brick, interspersed with some six-storey blocks, and enlivened by a few 'festival-style' touches: trellis porches and balconies, cantilevered stairs and a jaunty clock tower, from where one could marvel at the entire plan. There were to be schools and churches in a simple modernist style, as well as a Catholic church by Adrian Gilbert Scott (younger brother of Giles, who built Bankside and Battersea power stations) in what the Survey of London describes as a fruity 'Jazz-Modern Byzantine' style."