During the War, the area was home to several Anti-aircraft batteries and an Air Defence HQ, and so was extensively bombed. This provided the basis for the extensive rebuilding of the area, something which had begun in the 1930s with the construction of the White City Estate by London County Council. The original plan was for an estate consisting of 2300 flats in 49 5-storey blocks, to house a population of 11,000. However the war halted construction, with a slimmed down plan completed in 1953 with a population of 8000. Design wise the estate is a typical London County Council 1930s design, and was somewhat anachronistic by the time it was completed, compared to the New Brutalist designs of estates like Alton West. The estate plan is partly influenced by Zeilenbau ideas, with blocks aligned along a north-south axis for maximum sunshine, with green spaces in between, and an east-west axis, Commonwealth Ave, with spaces for public buildings. The streets are named after countries featured in various exhibitions, such as Australia and Canada.

A little to the west is Phoenix Academy, built in 1958 as separate boys and girls schools, with shared facilities, Christopher Wren Boys' School and Hammersmith County Girls' School. The schools merged in 1982 and became Phoenix Academy in 2016. The school was built in brick and timber, which were used as other materials in short supply. It was the first job in charge for architect Edward Hollamby, who would go on to achieve great things as head of Lambeth Borough’s Architects Department and later the London Dockland Development Corporation. Hollamby was very much influenced by the Arts and Crafts architecture of the late 19th century, buying and restoring William Morris Red House in Bexleyheath. He used original Morris woodblocks to create a wallpaper pattern for the school, and comminsoned tapestry curtains designed by artist Gerald Holtom, featuring Morris, Rossetti and Burne-Jones. A new 6th form centre by Bond Bryan Architects, was opened in 2010.

A later addition to the area is the Wood Lane Estate, opposite the tube station, designed by John Darbourne and Geoffrey Darke. Planned from 1973, the estate was completed in 1978. It features 140 dwellings for 550 people, and consists of brown brick terraces, of two and four storeys. All homes have their own front door at pedestrian level, with pedestrian access and private spaces emphasised. Darbourne & Darke are most famous for their Lillington Gardens estate in Pimlico, and other estates in Islington, Richmond and Clapham.

From his arrival in 1931 until his premature retirement in the 1960s, Berthold Lubetkin helped introduce modernist design to Britain through a range of innovative buildings. His first buildings in the UK were those for London Zoo, the Gorilla House and the Penguin Pool, whose white walls and curving lines became an icon of the city. The Finsbury Health Centre was a success for its architectural design as well as its moral purpose, built as part of the “Finsbury Plan”, a borough wide policy to combat common problems such as lice, ricketts and diphtheria. His subsequent housing estates for Finsbury and other municipal boroughs brought to life his maxim “Nothing is too good for the ordinary people”. 

The building that brought him and his architectural practice Tecton to the attention of the world's architectural press, was Highpoint, an international modernist style apartment block on Highgate Hill for businessman Sigmund Gestetner in 1935. Gestetner’s original plan was for the block to house workers for his nearby factory (Tecton would design a factory for him in 1937, since demolished). However, in a reversal of the maxim mentioned earlier, Highpoint appears to have been too good for the ordinary people. ​

One of the most interesting and surprising details is the use of two caryatids as support pillars for the entrance porch. They were cast using moulds borrowed from the British Museum. Their use signaled a move away from the functionality of Highpoint I, towards a more playful approach, using classical and surrealist references. The use of the caryatids and the more varied materials shocked the young modernist orthodoxs, with Lubetkin seeming to throw away the ideals he had written in concrete next door only a couple of years earlier. ​