ABSTRACT
One of the features of the model estate at Quarry Hill — a very fundamental one for the design and social intentions — was the innovating building system. The decision to use this was, as we have seen, an unusual one for public authority housing at that time and the difficulties it gave rise to seem rather to anticipate those of innovating buildings of the 1950s and 1960s than to reflect normal experience of the interwar period. The reasons governing the choice of the Mopin system have already been discussed. It resulted in a difficult contract which showed the inherent problems of building innovation, particularly when the importation of foreign systems is involved, and had lasting effects, material and non-material, on the estate and life within it.
