Arlington House Margate
Arlington House is impossible to ignore on the Margate skyline. Thirty storeys of white concrete rising above the seafront, angular, bold, and showing its age. For a photographer drawn to Brutalist architecture and the poetry of decay, it is an obvious subject. I didn’t need much more reason than that.
It opened in December 1964, designed by Russell Diplock and Associates and built by Bernard Sunley and Sons. Every flat was designed to have a sea view, achieved through an angular facade that steps and turns to face the water. The cladding is white concrete embedded with mica flecks, so that in direct sunlight the surface catches and sparkles. That detail feels almost optimistic against the current reality of the building, which is tired, worn, and caught in a long argument about its own future.
Margate and Brutalism
To understand Arlington House you need to understand both Margate and Brutalism. The town has a long history as a British seaside resort, popular through the 19th and early 20th centuries, then hit hard by the mid-century shift in holiday patterns and the economic decline that followed. The recent resurgence, driven by Turner Contemporary, the creative community, and a wave of people drawn by Margate’s particular aesthetic and atmosphere, has given the town a new layer of identity without erasing the old ones. Arlington House sits at the centre of that layering, a bold statement from one era, weathering into another.
Brutalism takes its name from the French béton brut, raw concrete. It emerged after the Second World War as an architecture of social ambition: housing built quickly and at scale, civic buildings designed to project confidence and modernity in a country rebuilding itself. Key features are honest use of materials, strong geometric forms, minimal decoration, and a sense of monumental mass. Arlington embodies all of these. The white concrete, the angular form, the sheer scale of it against the Kent coast, it was intended to be a statement. It still is, just not quite the one its builders had in mind.
Controversy and Endurance
As with most Brutalist structures, Arlington has accumulated its share of problems. Commercial units fallen into disuse. Arlington Square partly demolished. Fire safety concerns, aging windows, rising heating costs, maintenance battles. There is a current argument about proposed changes to the original window design, pitting architectural authenticity against practical necessity. High profile opponents of those changes include Tracey Emin, who grew up in Margate and has spoken about the building’s place in the town’s identity.
Yet it endures. And in its endurance there is something worth photographing, the gap between the optimism embedded in its design and the reality of what time and neglect have done to it. That gap is where the interest lies. Not the ruin porn of pure decay, but something more specific: a building still inhabited, still functional, still argued over, still standing on the Margate seafront doing exactly what it was built to do.
For black and white photography, Arlington is ideal. The geometry is relentless. The contrast between the white concrete facade and the Kent sky gives you drama without effort. The worn surfaces, the shadows in the recesses, the angular forms against the sea, all of it translates directly into monochrome.
These images form part of my ongoing personal documentary project, black and white architecture and street photography from Kent, London, and beyond. Based in Sandwich, Kent, I work as a portrait and documentary photographer across the UK and internationally. If you would like to discuss a commission or follow the documentary work, visit the Personal Observations gallery or get in touch directly.
Visceral, character-led portraits from honest, quiet human moments. Classical legacy portraiture for private commissions. International, UK, London, based in Sandwich, Kent.