Also in the centre of this new town was the Ritz Cinema, designed by architect Major WJ King, who designed a number of cinemas around the suburbs. The Ritz opened in May 1932, and its design was quite eye-catching, with the profile of an art deco castle, with an array of tower-like projections on its exterior, Inside, it was decorated in a Spanish garden theme. Complete with painted woodland scenes. The cinema was modernised in 1968 with a blue metal screen installed at the front. It remained as a cinema until 2001, when it closed, being demolished the following year. ​

The most obviously modernist building of the interwar expansion of Edgware was the new church on Deans Lane, the John Keble Memorial Church (1937), designed by D.F. Martin-Smith, who had won the competition for its design, judged by Edward Maufe. It has a square tower with a concrete lantern, constructed of reinforced concrete and yellow stock brick. Inside, the ceiling is constructed in a diagrid pattern, with a diagonal pattern in coffered concrete. The church is now Grade II listed.

Certainly not modernist, but definitely worth mentioning, is the Railway Hotel, an “improved” pub of 1931. It was designed by A.E. Sewell for the Truman Hanbury and Buxton brewery, in a Neo-Tudor style with half timbering, decorative brick chimneys and leaded windows. Improved pubs were built by the chain breweries in the 1920s and 30s, seeking to attract a better class of clientele such as families, and designed to include parking facilities, comfortable saloon bars and dining rooms. They were built all around the suburbs, quite often next to or just off the new bypass and circular roads of the era. Some were built in a moderne style, but most harked back to earlier eras, as seen with the Railway Hotel, Unfortunately this example has not been treated well by the 21st century, and is currently in a dilapidated state, despite its listed status. ​

1939 was a high watermark year for the private modernist house in Britain. In this blog series, we have already covered Erno Goldfinger's terrace at Willow Road and Seely and Paget's Studio House in Highgate, both completed the same year. Peter Moro’s Harbour Meadow house at Birdham in West Sussex was also completed in 1939, but perhaps the finest house that year was The Homewood in Esher, Surrey, designed by 26 year old architect Patrick Gwynne for his parents, and later to be his own home.

Gwynne was born on 24th March 1914 in Porchester, Hampshire. His parents were Naval commander Alban Gwynne and Ruby. He attended Harrow school, where he apparently saw Amyas Connell’s High and Over on a sketching trip, a pivotal moment for the young Gwynne. Avoiding his fathers plans for him to go into accountancy, Gwynne trained with former Lutyens assistant Ernest Coleridge, before joining the office of Canadian architect and Isokon designer, Wells Coates, alongside a young Denys Lasdun. Gwynne designed The Homewood just after leaving Coates, after his parents sold an inherited plot of land in Wales, allowing them to pay for the demolition of the old “Homewood” house they had lived in for 25 years and the construction of a new one. The old house was sited next to the main road which had got progressively busier since they settled here, and Gwynne placed the new house at the back of the 10 acre plot amongst mature trees. ​

The house's patrons, Gwynne’s parents, did not live long enough to enjoy their son's designs. They both died before the end of World War II, and his sister decided not to live there, leaving Patrick as the house's inhabitant for the next 46 years, alongside his companion, pianist Harry Rand. The Homewood also acted as his office and showroom for his clients over the next half decade, with many of Gwynne’s future commissions featuring design details Gwynne first tested at his home. Gwynne also designed a few more residences neighboring The Homewood. Firstly Gwynne designed a rebuild of a garden cottage to the south of The Homewood in 1958 with an extension in 1966. He then designed two new houses, Amanda on Meadway, a circular house in 1971 (now demolished), and Winterdown, a V-shaped house with a mansard roof from 1985 (recently sold, with planning permission for redevelopment). ​

The Royal College of Physicians building on St Andrews Place, opposite Regents Park was officially opened on 5th November 1964 by Queen Elizabeth II. The society, founded in 1518, had decided to move their headquarters from their building in Pall Mall to a new site, previously home to Someries House, a John Nash building damaged in World War II. The new headquarters was designed by Denys Lasdun, chosen after a process involving the interviewing of five architects. The new building had to fit into the surrounding stucco terraces, incorporate historical elements transferred from the old RCP headquarters and provide offices, meeting rooms, a dining room and a library. ​

2 Regal Lane, Primrose Hill, Camden
1961
John Winter
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A three storey house on a mews opposite Regents Park, this home was designed and built by architect John Winter for himself and his family in the early 1960s whilst working in the office of Erno Goldfinger. A set of garages were on the plot when Winter and his wife Val bought it, and they incorporated the old buildings into their new home. The house was constructed using reclaimed brick, in situ concrete and large windows, allowing light into the house on its narrow plot. The house also features a steel spiral staircase which reaches all the way up to the top floor with the master bedroom and a balcony facing towards the park. Winter extended his original design both before and after before moving to his corten steel house in Swains Lane, Highgate. Winter also designed two further houses in Regal Lane in 1963, Nos.10 & 11, two connected houses in brick with a carport on the ground floor.

15-19 Murray Mews
1964-65
Team 4
Down an indistinct side mews to the east of Camden Town is an early project by two of the most famous names in the second half of 20th century architecture. 15-19 Murray Mews was one of a handful of projects by partnership of Team 4, the short-lived practice made up of Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Su Brumwell, Wendy Cheesman and Georgie Wolton. The practice only lasted for 4 years, with Wolton leaving after a few months, but produced a handful of influential designs.
One of them was this group of three houses in Camden, all squeezed onto a small plot. The houses open straight out on the street and have a private courtyard at the rear with glazed walls, allowing light into the interior. The houses are constructed of red brick walls and concrete floors, with a sloping glass roof. The tribulations of the houses construction, with an unscrupulous builder ignoring many details of the houses designs, led the practice to look at alternative materials and construction, paving the way for their glass and steel High Tech future. A large number of other houses were built along Murray Mews, including those by Tom Kay (No.22), Richard Gibson (No.20) and David and Ann Hyde-Harrison (No.33).

62 Camden Mews
1962-5
Edward Cullinan
Edward ‘Ted’ Cullinan began his career working for Denys Lasdun, working on projects like the Royal College of Physicians and the University of East Anglia. In 1960 he decided to build a house for himself and his family on an empty lot on Camden Mews. He produced a design for a house facing south with an open plan living area on the first floor, with windows angled to maximize sunlight through the day, but also provide shade in high summer. Bedrooms were placed on the ground floor, with the letter box emptying into the main bedroom, an idea that allows the Sunday newspaper to be delivered directly to bed! 

The two floors are connected by an external staircase via a terrace on the garage roof, and a smaller internal spiral staircase.The house was built between 1962 and 64 by Cullinan with friends and family of a few years, on weekends and when time allowed, using a mixture of timber, brick and concrete, bought , borrowed and stolen (or at least reclaimed). Cullinan and family lived at 62 Camden Mews until Cullian’s death in 2019, with the house recently going on the market for the first time. As on Murray Mews, the 1960s, 70s and 80s saw a number of young architects build houses on Camden Mews, such as Jon Howard (No.74), Peter Bell (no.4) and Sheila Bull (No.23).

The shape of the plot, long and thin and running north-south, formed the design of the house. The house is rectangular in plan but not in form, with a long sloping glass rear facade which creates four floors of reducing length as it rises. The ground floor contains the entrance hall (which rises to the top of the house) and a living room, below that is a basement level with an au pair bedroom, utility room, kitchen and the dining room, overlooked by a balcony from the floor above. The top two floors of the house are home to the children's bedroom and on the top floor the master bedroom. The dining room opens up onto a very small, wedge-shaped garden which is surrounded by mature trees. ​

The same year that Malator was built, 1994, Future Systems also secured the commission that would bring them the attention of the world beyond architecture periodicals. The Lord’s Media Centre, completed in 1999,  hovers above a stand of the venerable cricket ground, like a visitor from outer space, its sleek body constructed in the Pendennis shipyard in Falmouth. The building won the Stirling Prize in 1999. Kaplicky and Levete had married in 1991, and after they separated and divorced in 2006, the practice was split into separate practices. Kaplicky died in 2009 aged 71. Levete continues to practice, and has won many awards. ​

The borough’s own architects department also took inspiration from Segal's ideas, with the scheme at Brockley Park, next to Segal Close, designed by Geoffrey Wigfall, using mono pitched homes built in brick and finished with timber cladding and grass roofs. Some of the houses feature “pods” at the front, to be used for extra living or storage space, and the estate is grouped around a large green space. ​

Segal passed away in 1985 but his ideas persisted with self build projects appearing all around the capital's suburbs, with collaborator Jon Broome continuing the philosophy with his own practice Architype. Self-built projects can be found at Headway Gardens in Walthamstow, Parish Gardens in Greenwich, Eridge Green Close in Bromley and opposite Segal Close in Brockley Park, as well as at many other sites around the suburbs. ​

The Rayners Lane Grosvenor Cinema opened on 12th October 1936, with a showing of ‘The Country Doctor’ starring Jean Hersholt. The cinema was part of the small Hammond Dawes circuit, and was partially paid for by the housing developers T.F. Nash, who had built Harrow Garden Village at Rayners Lane from 1929 and wanted suitable attractions to entice new suburbanites to the development. The new cinema was designed by architect Frank Ernest Bromige, who had previously designed a number of cinemas, including the streamlined Dominion Southall (1936, now demolished) and the Dominion in Harrow, with its curving facade hidden until its recent restoration. ​

For the cinema at Rayners Lane, Bromige produced one of his, and suburban cinemas, most memorable designs. The cinema is built as part of a typical interwar parade, opposite Rayners Lane Underground Station, which was rebuilt in 1938 by R.H. Uren and Charles Holden. The frontage has a three part facade made up of two tall large glass convex sections which flank a large central concave window above the entrance. In front of this concave window is a curved vertical concrete feature, often said to resemble an elephant's trunk. Bromige actually referred to this feature as a stylised question mark, but the association with an elephant's trunk has stuck. The feature was highlighted with neon lighting, and in front of it was a revolving vertical name sign, with GROSVENOR spelt out in chunky letters.

The Sun House is neither of those things, firmly designed in the International Style of modernism, with its flat roof, bright white walls and tubular steel balconies. Unlike many modernist houses of the 1930s, the Sun House was actually built in concrete, rather than brick covered in white render. The south-facing, front facade is dominated by the curved projecting canopy on the right hand side, and two horizontal strips of sliding windows. The front balcony and sun roof terrace exemplify the idea of the time that many maladies, both physical and mental, could be cured by extra sunlight and air. A garage is integrated into the ground floor, accessed by a short, steep driveway. ​

The National Recreation Centre in Crystal Palace Park was officially opened on 13th July 1964 by the Duke of Edinburgh (who had his arm in a sling due to a polo accident). The decade earlier, Crystal Palace Park was derelict. It had formerly been the home of Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, first erected at Hyde Park for the 1851 Great Exhibition, then moved south in 1854, where it stood until it caught fire and collapsed in November 1936. Sir Gerald Barry, who had just overseen the 1951 Festival of Britain, was given the task of coming up with a use for the area. At first an exhibition centre was proposed to fill the site, before the counter idea of a National Sports Centre won out. ​