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  • About
  • Metro-Land and Modernism
  • The Buildings
    • North London
    • West London
    • East London
    • South London
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  • The Architects
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  • References & Links
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Anatomy of a House No.2 - Sugden House, Watford

14/6/2022

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Sugden House, Watford, Hertfordshire
1955-56
Alison & Peter Smithson

Our first Anatomy of a House featured the stark modernist High and Over in Amersham, a perfect example of the Heroic period of modernist architecture between the wars. Our second Anatomy moves about 8 miles west to the outskirts of Watford, to visit a house designed by a pair of architects determined to revive that heroic era, Alison and Peter Smithson. The Smithsons had come to prominence in the mid-1950s with a design for their own house at Colville Place in Soho. As they themselves declared in Architectural Design, had it been built “it would have been the first exponent of the ‘new brutalism’ in England”. Their design showcased the building materials, with no internal finishes leaving the brick and concrete structure for all to see. 
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Design for a House in Soho by Alison & Peter Smithson.
Plans for other houses came and went in the 1950s, but their first built house was to be for Derek Sugden, an engineer with Ove Arup & Partners. Sugden was born in Hitchin, attended Harrow Weald Grammar then worked for a couple of engineering firms before moving to work with Ove Arup. He and his wife Jean commissioned the Smithsons to build a house at the end of Devereux Drive, to the north west of Watford town centre. Sugden's brief was for "a simple house, an ordinary house, but… this should not exclude it from being a radical house", and this is what the Smithsons would eventually give them. Sugden was an admirer of the Smithson school at Hunstanton, and Derek asked Peter for the name of an architect to design a house. To Derek's surprise Peter said that he and Alison would do it. 
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First design for the Sugden House by Alison Smithson
The first draft was drawn up by Alison. She produced a design with a split pitched roofline and irregular arranged windows. The Sugdens did not approve this design, with them wanting more natural light inside and a kitchen facing north. Peter reorganised the house, giving the outline a more traditional appearance and enlarging the windows, whilst keeping Alison's off key intentions. The architects said they intended the house to look like “a blackish solid block pierced with windows in the manner of Vanbrugh Castle, Blackheath”.  Despite the obligatory dispute with the local planning committee, the house was approved on appeal. A covenant on the land specified that any house had to be built in brick with a tiled roof, leading to the ordinary but quietly radical design.   
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South East facade. Image from Architects Journal.
The house was constructed of reused London stock brick around a brick crosswall frame with concrete beams. The windows are large and metal framed, with an unusual arrangement, especially on the side facade. The roof is finished in concrete tiles and is much longer on one slope, covering the integrated garage. The front of the house faces south west, and sits at the top of a sloping lawn. Inside the house is arranged in a semi-open plan around a freestanding fireplace, with the flooring finished with chequerboard vinyl tiles. As intended with the unbuilt house in Soho, the interior is left with minimal finishes, showcasing the brick, concrete and timber construction materials. A timber, open staircase leads upstairs to four bedrooms and a bathroom. 
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Interior of Sugden House. Image from RIBApix.
The Sugdens were very pleased with the finished house and lived there for nearly 60 years. The garden was an ongoing project with Jean slowly landscaping the grounds, with shrubs, trees and wild grass eventually complementing the exterior of the house. The house was listed in July 2012 and is currently Grade II. Jean died in 2007, and Derek later married Katherine Douglas. Derek died in 2015, and for the first time the house was put on the market and sold. 

The Smithsons would go on to a career of many words but few buildings. Their most famous works post-Sugden House are the Economist Buildings (1965) in St James Street, SW1A and the Robin Hood Garden Estate (1972) in Poplar, now in the process of being demolished. You can watch the Smithsons talking about the design and building of Robin Hood Gardens in the short film The Smithsons on Housing by B.S. Johnson. The duo produced a handful of other domestic designs in their subsequent career, most notably Upper Farm Cottage (aka Solar Pavilion) in 1962, a timber framed house cum studio in Wiltshire. The Sugden House stands as a testament to both the Smithsons unique vision of what a house could be and to the Sugdens wish to make a house of their own, a simple but radical home. 
References
Alison and Peter Smithson (Works and Projects)- Marco Vidotto

Alison and Peter Smithson (Twentieth Century Architects)- Mark Crinson

Modernism without Rhetoric: Essays on the work of Alison and Peter Smithson- Edited by Helen Webster

​https://c20society.org.uk/obituaries/derek-sugden
 


​https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/13/derek-sugden

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Anatomy of a House No.1- High and Over, Amersham

24/5/2022

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Anatomy of a House is our new regular series exploring the design, history and architects of some of our favourite modernist houses. As well as featuring the most famous and influential houses of the Greater London region, we will also be giving centre stage to lesser known houses by famous architects and obscure houses by obscure architects. We start with one of the most prominent modernist houses in Metro-Land, High and Over in Amersham by Amyas Connell. 

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High and Over, Amersham, Buckinghamshire
1929-31
Amyas Connell

One of the most famous modernist houses in Metro-Land, and indeed the country, High and Over was a forerunner for the new style houses built through the 1930s. Other houses have a claim to be the first modernist dwellings in Britain, such as Peter Behrens New Ways in Northampton (1925) or the Silver End Houses in Essex (1926), but High and Over was the house that brought modernist domestic design to the public's attention. 

The house was commissioned by Professor Bernard Ashmole, who was at the time the director of the British School at Rome, later of the British Museum. Ashmole and his wife Dorothy moved back to Britain in 1928 and wanted a home in the countryside within commutable distance of London. Ashmole had met architect Amyas Connell at the school in Rome and asked him to design a house to be situated on 12 acres of land on a hilly site outside Amersham, a stop on the Metropolitan Railway. 
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Amyas Connell was born in Eltham, New Zealand in 1901, and after training with an architect in Wellington before travelling to Rome to attend the Rome School. Connell cut short his stay in Rome to design High and Over, with the planning application submitted in May 1929. The application was approved with the council saying they were doing so “with the greatest reluctance”. The council did not like the start modernist design but couldn't find a legal reason to turn it down (this was obviously before “in keeping” became a valid reason). 

Connell had originally planned for the building to be entirely constructed of concrete. However the expertise of buildings firms in Britain at this time was somewhat limited when it came to using concrete for smaller domestic projects. Instead the house was constructed by Messers Watson of Ascot, using a concrete frame with brick and block infill, with a bright white rendered finish. 
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Despite its stark geometry and white walls, Connell’s design for High and Over took many cues from historical styles of architecture. The Y shaped plan of the house, with its three wings allowed the Asmoles an almost 360 degree view over the countryside, as well as providing maximum sunlight into the house. Similar plans designed to catch sunlight throughout the day had been used by Arts & Crafts architects like E.S. Prior and Hermann Muthesius. The three wings of the house connect to a hexagonal centre, a design that had also been previously used by Arts & Crafts designers. 

Inside the house, the crisp white of the exterior was replaced with a more colourful, art deco-style palette. A fountain was the centrepiece of the house, with further decoration in coloured glass, steel and chrome strips. The concrete construction was hidden by suspended ceilings and a pale grey finish to the walls. You can see the original interior of the house in a short film by Pathe “The House of a Dream” . Of course the house was later featured in the televison film "Metro-land" by John Betjeman and Edward Mirzoeff, with Betjeman memorably declaring about High and Over "I am the home of a twentieth-century family, it proclaimed, ‘that loves air and sunlight and open country"
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The house was part of a larger plan incorporating landscaped gardens with a swimming pool, a gardeners lodge, an electrical transformer and a water tower. The house was given centre stage in the gardens with a winding path leading up the sloping gardens, with various viewing points along the way to admire the countryside in one direction, or High and Over in the other. This integrated landscape and view has now been altered, with parts of the estate sold off over the years for the mid 60s housing estate which now surrounds the house. Also around the house are the four “Sun Houses” designed by Basil Ward, Connell’s partner from 1930 (they would be joined by Colin Lucas in 1934. 

The house was listed in 1971, and is currently Grade II*. The house was subdivided into two homes, with the marvellous central hallway divided in two. Happily, the two halves have been reunited with the ground floor restored to its original floor plan and colour scheme. It may be over 90 years old but it still stands today as “The House of a Dream”.
References

Connell, Ward & Lucas: Modern Movement architects in England 1929-39: Dennis Sharp and Sally Rendel

A Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land: Joshua Abbott
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Dennis Sharp Archive at Paul Mellon Centre



Images from RIBApix/Amersham Museum/Paul Mellon/Britain from Above
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Tube Station Typologies 1924-61

25/1/2022

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We are excited to announce our new book in collaboration with Philip Butler aka artdecomagpie, Tube Station Typologies 1924-61, an exploration of the golden age of tube station design, centring on Charles Holden’s work for the underground 

We are launching crowdfunding to help publish this project with a list of exciting rewards including postcards, prints and a specially curated tour. Follow the link to help bring the book to life HERE
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The book will feature colour photographs of 79 stations, with a historical and design overview of each. It will also include an introduction overseeing the development of design on the network during this period and a list of demolished stations. 

The book will measure approximately 250mm x 200mm and be lithographically printed in the UK on 170gsm silk paper. It will feature 200 pages that will have sewn casebound binding in a hardback cover with white embossed foil text.
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Going to the Dogs: The Post War rebuilding of White City

23/12/2021

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Last year we wrote a blog on our Modernist London sister site looking at the postwar rebuilding of Bethnal Green in East London. This time we venture west and explore how the White City area of Shepherds Bush reconstructed itself after World War II. The area was farmland until the railway companies bought trains and trams to the area from 1874. The “White City” name comes from the 1908 Franco British Exhibition held in the area, which featured pavilion structures clad in white marble. The only remnant of the exhibition is the Japanese Gardens on the other side of the old TV Centre. The same year the Olympic Games were held at White City, with a new stadium designed by engineer JJ Webster. It was famously used for greyhound racing as well as other sports until demolished in 1985 and replaced by BBC White City. 
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The White City Estate. Image via Municipal Dreams.
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.
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One of the first buildings of the postwar era in the area was the new underground station for the area. White City Station, built to replace the old Wood Lane station, which opened in 1908. The new station building was built just to the north of the old station, opening on 23rd November 1947. It was designed by architects A.D. McGill and Keith Seymour, under the supervision of Thomas Bilbow, Chief Architect of London Transport. They produced a Charles Holden-like design, with a rectangular ticket hall, featuring large glass windows with a coloured roundel.The station won a Festival of Britain design award in 1951, and the Abram Games designed plaque can be seen to the left of the entrance. 
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BBC Television Centre (1951-60) by Norman and Dawbarn. Image from RIBApix.
Another early postwar building was the new BBC Television Centre, built from 1951-60. It was  designed by Graham Dawbarn of Norman & Dawbarn, with the plan of the building being a question mark shape, reportedly after Dawbarn drew a question mark on an envelope when starting his designs and realising it would be an ideal shape for the site. It is now Grade II listed and has been redeveloped for a mixture of studios and homes.

New community buildings for the White City estate were added into the Zeilenbau grid. Opened as Canberra Infants and Juniors School in 1949, the now Ark Swift Academy is a conventional example of late 40s, early 50s London County Council school design. It is built in brick, and features ‘Festival’ details such as blue columns and external reliefs. Opposite the school is the church of St George and St Michael for 1953, designed by Seely and Paget to serve the estate. A Roman Catholic church, Our Lady of Fatima, was opened in 1966, designed by Wilfrid Cassidy. 
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Malabar Court (1964) by Noel Moffett & Partners. Image from RIBApix.
The most dramatic postwar building in this immediate area is Malabar Court, an old people's home designed by Noel Moffett & Partners in 1964. Built up of hexagonal units, allowing privacy and maximum sunlight for each resident. The home is constructed of concrete and brick infill, around a tall service column. Moffett designed similar old persons homes in Camden, Barnes, Twickenham, and two estates in Tower Hamlets. 
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Hammersmith County Girls' School (1958) by Edward Hollamby of the LCC. Image via Pinterest.
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.
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Monk Court, St Luke's (1978) by Hutchinson, Monk & Locke. Image from Tony Monk.
In the 1960s the area became bounded by the Westway motorway extension to the north and Hammersmith Flyover to the south. The southern part of this area was also rebuilt in the 1950s and 60s. A church from 1872 on the Uxbridge Road was damaged by a bomb in WW2 and never properly repaired. Eventually it was replaced in 1978 by St Lukes, a new church, hall, vicarage and housing complex, designed by Hutchinson, Monk & Locke. The church features stained glass by John Hayward, and an interior of exposed brick and wooden fixtures and furnishings. Hutchinson, Monk & Locke formed in 1964, after winning a competition to design Paisley Civic Centre as students.
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Westville Road School (1951) by Erno Goldfinger. Image from RIBApix.
Heading 5 minutes south to Westville Road, we find one of three schools by Erno Goldfinger from 1951. It was designed in a kit form, to be able to be used on a variety of sites, like the contemporary Herts County Council schools, built with exposed concrete and brick infill. The scheme features low, informally grouped buildings with large windows and a tall brick tower. Nearby is Flora Gardens, two blocks of flats comprising a total of 37 homes, designed for Hammersmith Borough by H.T. Cadbury-Brown with borough engineer J.E. Scrase. Cadbury-Brown had assisted Erno Goldfinger, as well as designing for the Festival of Britain and Harlow New Town, and later designed the Royal College of Art. The flats are designed in brick with exposed reinforced concrete floor slabs, and built by the borough’s Direct Labour Organization. 

The postwar rebuilding project has itself been rebuilt in various waves since the 1980s, with White City and central Hammersmith continually in reconstruction mode. Hopefully this blog will serve as a reminder of the postwar buildings we may lose and the social, rather than monetary, thinking behind them. 
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Too Good: Berthold Lubetkin and Highpoint

6/12/2021

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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”. 
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Highpoint I entrance. Image from RIBApix.
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. ​
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View of Berthold Lubetkin's apartment in Highpoint II. Image from Bonhams.
The first block, later known as Highpoint I, consisted of a seven storey, reinforced monolithic concrete structure containing 60 flats. Built between 1933-35, it was laid out in a double cruciform plan, eight flats to a floor. The two and three bedroom flats were arranged so the living rooms in each would receive light at some point during the day. The flats had the luxuries of central heating, a built-in refrigerator and shutes for disposing of dirty laundry, as well as a communal tearoom and a winter garden. Ove Arup oversaw the engineering for Highpoint, devising a system that reused the concrete shuttering as the building rose. The completed building was a critical success, with Le Corbusier visiting on behalf of the Architectural Review and declaring it “an achievement of the first rank”.
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Sketch for Highpoint II. Image from RIBApix.
The success of the first building led to another. Highpoint II was built on a piece of land Lubetkin had urged Gestetner to purchase to avoid encroaching developments. Built between 1936-38, the second building progressed on from the white walled minimalism of the first, by including brick and tile as exterior finishes. This was partly down to complaints from neighbouring residents at the dazzling whiteness of Highpoint I, and partly to guard against the inclemencies of the English weather. Highpoint II has fewer flats, with only 12 apartments and a penthouse (taken by Lubetkin), but was larger and more luxurious in materials, combining marble, pinewood and tiling throughout. The lifts in Highpoint II also bring residents straight to their apartment, with no intermediate lobby or hallway.
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Layout for Highpoint I + II. Image from RIBApix.
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. ​
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Entrance to Highpoint II, with caryatid.
Like Highpoint I, the second block was a commercial success, prompting many more offers from developers for Tecton to design luxury flats. However Lubetkin and Tecton moved towards municipal architecture, starting with Finsbury Health centre and moving onto estates such as Priory Green, Spa Green and Bevin Court. Lubetkin's plan for Peterlee New Town was stymied by bureaucratic wrangling, and after the completion of the Dorset Estate for Bethnal Green Urban Borough, he retired to Bristol where he lived until his death in 1990.
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A Man for All Seasons: The Career of Colin Lucas

25/11/2021

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The career of Colin Lucas encompassed the first 50 years of modernism in Britain. Beginning by designing some of the first concrete houses in the country, he then joined the partnership of Connell and Ward to design a number of the most influential houses of the 30s, before becoming part of the London County Council Architects Department after World War II, helping to rebuild the shattered capital. His life in architecture spanned the eras from heroic modernism to municipal brutalism, via the “Festival” years, and the battle of styles in between.
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Colin Lucas. Image from Paul Mellon Centre.
Colin Lucas was born in Greenwich in 1906, to Ralph Lucas and Mary Anderson Juler. Ralph was a trained engineer, but spent most of his time trying to invent valveless engines, whilst Mary was a modern composer. Colin went to Cambridge University and studied architecture under George Checkley, who would design two early modernist houses in Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge in 1928, he went to work for his fathers construction company, Lucas, Lloyd & Co, with Colin designing Noah’s House in Cookham for the family.

The house and boathouse on the River Thames was built in monolithic reinforced concrete, at a time when small-scale construction in concrete was rare. Most “Modern” houses were built in brick, then covered in white render to give the appearance of concrete construction. Unfortunately today, Noah’s House has been given a rustic makeover, complete with thatched roof! The boathouse however is intact and Grade II* listed.

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The Hopfield in Platt, Kent (1933) by Colin Lucas
Lucas also designed and built a few other houses with Lucas, Lloyd & Co, including The Hopfield in Platt, Kent (1933), also now listed. Like Noah’s House, Hopfield was a weekend house for Lucas and his family. Again it was built in reinforced concrete, rendered white and featured a dramatic external staircase, influenced by Le Corbusier's staircases for Maison Citrohan and Villa Stein. The house has been extended a number of times, but the structure of the original design is still recognisable.Lucas’ last solo house was another weekend residence, the Flat Roofed House in Little Frieth, Bucks for Margaret Sewell and her actress daughter, Phillida. As the name suggests it was a flat roofed, concrete house with views over the Hambleden Valley. 
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The Dragons, Woodmancote (1936) by Colin Lucas. Image from RIBApix
In 1934 Lucas joined the New Zealand architects Amyas Connell and Basil Ward in their partnership, becoming Connell, Ward & Lucas. Connell had come to prominence with his design for High & Over, a three storey Y-shaped house on Highover Hill in Amersham for Prof. Bernard Ashmole, one of the first modernist houses in the country. The firm mainly designed white walled modernist homes for the well to do, with each partner given solo responsibility for a job. 

Lucas is credited with designing 5 houses and a block of flats in his short time with Connell and Ward. The first house Lucas designed was The Dragons in Woodmancote, West Sussex in 1936. Once again it was a weekend house, this time for a Dr & Mrs Crow. The two storey house was designed to overlook the South Downs with its roof terrace and the living room window angled at 30 degrees to catch the views. The house has had additions and extensions added to it, which obscure Lucas’s original designs. The house is not listed. Another Lucas house which has suffered an ill fate is Greenside in Wentworth, Surrey. Built in  1937 for Sir Williamson Noble, surgeon to the Queen, who never actually lived there due to his wife’s hatred of the house! The house, originally called Bracken, features a prominent rectangular glazed staircase tower with an inbuilt garage and a large roof terrace. The house became something of a cause celebre, when in 2003, it was demolished by its owners to be replaced by something more in keeping with the genteel golf course next door.  
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Kent House, Ferdinand Street, Camden (1935) by Colin Lucas for Connell, Ward & Lucas. Image from RIBApix.
Happily other Lucas houses from his time with Connell and Ward are still extant and listed. 66 Frognal, Hampstead (1938) was built for solicitor Geoffrey Walford, and like other Connell, Ward & Lucas houses caused controversy, being called both “one of the greatest acts of vandalism ever perpetrated in London” and “..the best pre-war house in England”. There was also 26 Bessborough Road in Roehampton (1938) and Potcroft in West Sussex (1938). Whereas the house in Bessborough was a straightforward concrete International Style design, Potcroft had to be finished in timber due to the local planning authorities stipulations. Kent House in Ferdinand Street, Camden (1935) was the only block of flats completed by the practice, The design, led by Lucas, for the St Pancras House Improvement Society, consisted of two four storey blocks, with each apartment having 2 or 3 bedrooms, electric kitchens and balconies.
When war broke out, Lucas went to work for the British Research Station at Princes Risborough, before leaving for the USA in 1945 to reunite with his family, who had moved theri during the war. Lucas found work had to come by and returned to Britain, finding himself a role in the architect's department of the London County Council. The L.C.C. under Leslie Martin had begun to rebuild the city after the devastation of the war, and a popular impulse to create a fairer, more modern society gave the L.C.C. the impetus to create large estates all over the capital. The flagship for the new estates was at Roehampton, built on the edge of Richmond Park on Downshire Field, an 18th century landscape. The estate handily juxtaposes the aesthetic battle of the immediate post war years, as the Scandinavian influenced “Festival” style (used for the east side of the estate), gave way to the tougher, brutalist style on the west side.
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Alton West Estate, Roehampton (1955-58) by LCC Architects Dept.
Lucas was the architect in charge of Alton West, designed from 1952-3, and built between 1955 and 58. The 5 slab blocks of maisonettes, standing out from the sloping grounds on pilotis, form a  dramatic group, offset by the vertical nine storey point blocks and the old people's bungalows along Minstead Gardens and Danebury Avenue. Lucas oversaw a team consisting of John Partridge, Bill Howell,  Stanley Amis, John Killick and Roy Stout, who would go on to form HKPA and Stout & Litchfield. Previous to Alton, Lucas had worked on the Ackroydon estate in Wimbledon, between 1950-54. Lucas designed Oatland Court, the 11 storey point block that towers over the rest of the low rise estate. 
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Cedars Road, Clapham (1961-68) by GLC Architects Department. Image from Iqbaal Aalam.
Lucas returned to the tower block in another set of estates for LCC (and subsequently the GLC). Alongside Philip Bottomley, Lucas developed a tower block plan that alternated 3 floors of two bed and 1 floor of one bed apartments around a service core, to create a Jenga like profile. The spaces around the lower blocks were kept as car free as possible, with old peoples flats and community buildings also situated in the grounds. Four estates like this were built at Rotherhithe, Camberwell, Battersea and Wandsworth. Lucas also oversaw further estates for the LCC/GLC at Cedars Road, Clapham (1961-68) and Kidbrooke (1962-67).

Lucas shunned the limelight, receiving an OBE with typical diffidence in 1972. He retired six years later, settling down with his second wife (and his cousin) Pamela Campbell, developing an interest in the philosophies of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. Lucas died in 1984,leaving behind a career that spanned the life of modernism in Britain, from the first stirrings of the International Style, through the early post war years when it became the face of the state and onto the systems built estates that would be its last hurrah.
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Georgie Wolton 1934-2021

22/9/2021

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Georgie Wolton, architect and landscape designer, died last month on 25th August. Wolton was born in 1934, training at the Architectural Association and later working in the USA. Alongside her sister, Wendy Cheesman, she founded the Team 4 practice with Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Su Brumwell, despite being the only qualified architect, Wolton left after a few months. Wolton went into practice herself, designing only a handful of buildings over the next 25 years. The most famous of which is the live/work space. Cliff Road Studios in Camden (1968-71).

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Fieldhouse, Crocknorth (1969) by Georgie Wolton
Wolton also designed Fieldhouse, a steel house in Crocknorth, Surrey in 1969. The design used CorTen steel cladding, contemporary with John Winters house in Highgate. The house was dismantled in 1993, and is now in storage. She was influenced in the design for the house by Van Der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and the Cape Cod house of Serge Chermayeff, which she had visited. 

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House, Belsize Lane (1976) by Georgie Wolton
Wolton also designed a house for herself in Belsize Lane (1976). The house is a single storey structure in brick, with a small glass pyramid rooflight. Wolton later went into landscaping, designing gardens for The River Cafe and RSH+P’s Thames Reach. Wolton also worked on the gardens at the Dartington Hall Estate in Devon. Jonathan Meades priased her work and described her as the "outstanding woman architect of the generation before Zaha Hadid".

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Thames Reach Studios (1984-7) by RSH+P, landscaping by Georgie Wolton.
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Metallic Metro-Land: The Steel Houses of Suburbia

13/7/2021

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The Case Study houses, built in California between 1945 and 1966, have become some of the most influential house designs of the post war era. The building programme was sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, and featured designs by the likes of Ray & Charles Eames,  Pierre Koenig, Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood and others. Many of the houses used steel in their designs, a material not previously common in housebuilding, but now available due to the mass production systems left behind by World War II. The Case Study houses would prove influential to a new generation of architects in Britain, who looked to replicate the horizontal, steel framed designs photographed by Julius Shulman and others. This blog will explore the steel houses of suburbia that appeared in Britain from the 1960s and spread around the country.
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Sketch for Case Study House 25 (1962) by Killingsworth, Brady and Smith. Image from MCM Daily
The houses that sprung up in the suburbs of London and beyond in the wake of the Case Study houses, would not be the first homes to use metal framing in the post war period. After the devastation of the Blitz and the subsequent rebuilding efforts, thousands of prefab homes were built around the outskirts of the capital. The British Iron and Steel Federation produced a steel framed house design that was erected from 1945 onwards. The house was designed by Frederick Gibberd, and featured a tubular steel frame clad in metal sheeting. Over 30,000 of these houses were built, and many can still be seen today, particularly in the suburbs around the North Circular road. Other houses featuring steel frames were built in immediate post war years, including a terrace in Romford (1949), designed by Denis Clarke Hall, better known for his school designs
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BISF Prefab Houses, Northolt (1945) by Frederick Gibberd. Image from RIBApix.
One of the first Case Study influenced houses to be built in Britain was Panshanger in Capel, Surrey, designed by Michael and Anglea Newberry for themselves in 1957. The house is fairly basic in plan and structure, a 36 ft x 36 ft square with all glass walls and a welded plate roof supported by four columns, forming a reciprocal, self supporting frame. Newberry designed two more steel frame houses, one in Mawnan Smith, Cornwall in 1962 and another for himself in Wiltshire in 2001.
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Panshanger, Capel, Surrey (1957) by Michael & Angela Newberry
Two more architects would take up the mantle of the steel house in Britain in the 1960s, Michael Manser and John Winter. Manser set up his own practice after working as a journalist and also for the practice of Norman & Dawbarn. His interest in working with steel was encouraged by Ove Arup, who was Manser’s part time tutor as a student. From 1960, Michael Manser Associates designed a string of steel framed houses in the Home Counties. His most famous house design is Capel Manor House (1970) in Horsmonden, Kent, for the former MP John Howard, built on and around the remains of a 19th century mansion by Thomas Henry Wyatt. The Manser house is a one storey structure in the style of a pavilion, inspired by the work of Mies van Der Rohe. The house has an exposed steel frame and sits on a concrete podium which itself is on top of a basement from the original villa. The house was listed in 2013. A similarly dramatic steel house by Manser is the aptly named Cliffhanger, built in 1963 for the designer David Papworth, which cantilevers over a slope in Godalming. Both houses, and others by Manser of the period, were engineered by Jack Dawson. 
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Capel Manor House, Horsmonden, Kent (1970) by Michael Manser. Image from The Manser Practice.
John Winter had moved to the United States in the late 1950s, working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and then Charles & Ray Eames, designers of perhaps the most famous Case Study House, No.8 in Pacific Palisades, California. Winter also took a road trip across the States visiting Mies Van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and the Case Study Homes, where he met Richard Neutra. On coming back to Britain his first steel framed house was in Wentworth for Graham and Diana Stewart-Ross in 1965. Assisted by John Mosse, a student of Winter at the time, the design used an external steel frame with timber cladding. The house was built with steel to allow quick construction, with the clients finishing the interiors themselves. ​
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Bearsden, Wentworth, Surrey (1965) by John Winter & John Mosse. Image from RIBApix.
Winter's most famous steel house is one he built for himself in Highgate overlooking the cemetery, 81 Swains Lane. The house is not only steel framed but also clad in CorTen steel, designed to weather and cover itself in a rusty patina, which took around 7 years for Winters house from completion. Winter also designed a neighbouring steel house at no.85, with bright blue detailing. The house was demolished in 2008 to make way for a replacement by Eldridge Smerin. ​
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81 Swains Lane, Highgate (1968) by John Winter. Image from New Steel Construction.
Team 4 was a short-lived but influential practice consisting of Su Brumwell, Wendy Cheeseman, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. Rogers and Brumwell would later marry, as would Foster and Cheesman. Wendy Cheesman’s sister Georgie Wolton was also part of the practice for a short time. Team 4 did not build any steel houses in their brief time together, but they did design the Reliance Control Factory in Swindon, made of prefabricated metal components, and the constituent members would all go on to design and build steel houses. 
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Spender House, Ulting, Essex (1967-70) by Richard & Su Rogers. Image from RIBApix.
Between 1967-70, Richard and Su Rogers designed two steel houses. The first was the Spender House in Ulting, Essex, a house and studio for artist Humphrey Spender. The job architect was John Young, who used 14m steel portal frames to form the structure of the two buildings. The other was a one-storey steel house at 22 Parkside, opposite Wimbledon Common. It was designed for Richard Rogers’ parents, again with a single storey main house and a separate studio and flat, all in bright yellow steel. It is now Grade II* listed and now owned by the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Su Rogers was also involved with the design of the steel framed Pillwood in Feock, Cornwall, alongside Alan Colqohoun and John Miller, not far from the Creek Vean house of Team 4.
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Fieldhouse, Crocknorth Farm, Surrey (1968) by Georgie Wolton.
Georgie Wolton is the least known member of Team 4, indeed she was only part of the practice for a few months, but she designed an early and remarkable steel house. The house was called Fieldhouse, located in Crocknorth Farm, Surrey and set in 60 acres of farmland inherited from her mother. Wolton designed the house for herself using glass walls and CorTen steel, slightly earlier than Winter. The house has now been dismantled and lies in storage, waiting to be rebuilt someday. ​
Norman Foster would also have a hand in designing steel framed houses, although not as widely known as the other houses that came from the group. Alongside the young Michael and Patty Hopkins, Foster redesigned an 1862 built coach house with a steel frame extension behind The Roebuck Pub in Pond Street, Hampstead in 1970. The extension added concrete blockwork, exposed steel roof trusses and glass end walls to the house, as well as a sloping glazed roof . A few years later Foster would design a house for himself and Wendy, also in Hampstead, made up of prefabricated steel framing, with a flexible interior and solar panels for energy, but the house was never built.
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Hopkins House, Hampstead (1977) by Michael and Patty Hopkins
Of course, Michael and Patty Hopkins would go on to design and build their own steel house, again in Hampstead, a few years after the Pond St extension. 49a Downshire Hill, or the Hopkins House as it is known, is a two storey house and studio in steel and glass. The top floor, containing the office and studio, is level with the street, with the ground floor living area opening out into the garden. The house was quickly recognised as a classic design, winning an RIBA award in 1977, a Civic Trust award in 1979 and being listed in 2018. The Hopkins still live at No.49a.
Alongside the famous names we have talked about, there were a number of lesser known architects designing steel houses in the suburbs and beyond in the 1960s and 70s. One of the earliest was Anthony B. Levy, who designed a steel house for himself at 21 West Heath Avenue, overlooking Golders Hill Park, Barnet, The house was built in 1961 and sits on thin steel piers above the sloping ground. The house is still there but run down and in need of some restoration. Further afield in Metro-Land there was Fram, a house by John Fryman in Knotty Green, Beaconsfield, built in 1962. Fryman designed the steel framed house in a T shape, again on a sloping site. The house was greatly extended over the years before being demolished in 2004. 
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21 West Heath Avenue, Golders Hill Park (1961) by Anthony Levy.
The duo of Peter Foggo and David Thomas built a number of single storey, steel framed houses in the early 1960s. A great example of their output at this time are 1-3 Manor Way in Holyport, Berkshire. These three houses, built in 1964, have the standard exposed steel frames and glass walls, arranged in H-shaped plans. The houses are also raised off the ground, giving them an appearance of floating. Foggo and Thomas would later go to work for, and become partners in, Ove Arup’s practice. 

The houses we have discussed and the initial Case Study designs proved highly influential to the next wave of steel houses built in the 1970s and 80s, and right up to today. We won’t attempt to list them all, but will explore some of the most interesting since the first wave at the end of the 1960s. 
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Windrush, Woodgreen, Hampshire (1984) by Richard Horden.
Richard Horden built nautically themed houses for his parents and later his sister. The first was Wildwood, aka Boat House, in Poole in 1972. It is constructed of a modular steel frame, and mirrored by a reflecting pool amid pine trees. The second house was Windrush aka Yacht House, in Hampshire. It is constructed using aluminium and steel components from an actual Tornado yacht. The house is perfectly square in plan, sitting on a concrete slab. The house was assembled on site by the owners in less than six hours. Horden had worked for Norman Foster at the start of his career before working for himself then later as Horden Cherry Lee. Horden passed away in 2018. ​
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2c & 2d Belsize Park Gardens, Camden (1978) by Spence & Webster. Image from RIBApix.
Back in the suburbs of London we find the twin houses of 2c & 2d Belsize Park Gardens in Camden, almost hidden between Georgian villas. They were designed by Robin Spence and Robin Webster for themselves, and feature 240 square meters of floor space, with a bedroom, kitchen, living area, another bedroom or office space and a courtyard garden. The engineering for the houses were taken care of by the Carter Clack Partnership, who were recommended for the job by Anthony Hunt when he couldn't do the job himself. ​
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Eagle, Rock, Coopers Green (1982) by Ian Ritchie.
Many steel houses tend to take the same pavilion-like form. However a few houses break this stereotype. The most obvious is the extraordinary Eagle Rock in Coopers Green, East Sussex, designed by architect Ian Rirchie and built in 1982 for Ursula Colahan. The plan of the house takes the form of a bird with a central column and two wings rising either side. The ‘tail’ features a greenhouse, part of an environmentally minded approach, looking to minimize any additional heating and ventilation. The house is formed of tubular steel A-frames, with steel masts to support the ‘wing’ sections. In the central column are the kitchen, utility and work rooms. The wings contain the bedrooms and a small gallery. Ritchie had already designed a much simpler steel house in France in 1976 and prior to that had worked for Norman Foster. ​
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40 Douglas Road, Canonbury (1993) by Future Systems.
Another house that eschews the pavilion shape is 40 Douglas Road, Canonbury, designed by Future Systems for Jeremy King and Debra Hauer. It is a four storey, wedge shaped house, built with a steel frame covered with recovered stock bricks. The house is almost fully glazed both front and rear, with 22 large panes of glass covering the building, and glass bricks at the front of the house that recall the Maison de Verre by Pierre Chareau. Future Systems was the practice set up by Amanda Levete and Jan Kaplicky, designing the Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground (1999) and the Selfridges Building in Birmingham (2003). Levete and Kaplicky went their separate ways in 2008, and Kaplicky passed away the next year. 

Of course steel framed houses continue to be built, in London and its suburbs, allowing quick construction and flexible interiors. The influence of the Case Study houses and those who brought those ideas back to Britain in the immediate postwar years can still be seen in these new houses and the ones we have explored. 

References
Buildings of England: London North- Pevsner & Cherry
The Modern Steel House- Neil Jackson
The Manser Practice website

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The Light Fantastic: The 1930s Building as Billboard

6/1/2021

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Buildings have always been designed to signify something, whether as temples, cathedral or palaces. But with the advent of electricity buildings could be used to advertise products and services through neon lighting, night and day. We will explore the buildings of the first half of the 20th century, designed with commercial gain in mind, such as Michelen House in Chelsea, completed in 1911 for the tyre firm of the same name. It was designed by Francois Espinasse, and adorned with details relating to cars and bicycles, such as the Michelen Man design. Espinasse was not an architect by training but an engineer, but he understood that the primary function of this building was to advertise. 
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Michelin House, Chelsea (1911) by Francois Espinasse. Image from twnews.es
The cinemas of the 1920s and 30s were the epitome of the idea of the building as billboard. Hundreds of screens were built in the Golden age of cinema, for chains such as Odeon, ABC and Gaumont. The cinema architects had to produce increasingly extravagant buildings to attract customers to their particular chain.The designers often went for a theme such as Moorish, as seen at the Ealing Odeon, opposite Northfields station. Designed by Cecil Masey, the cinema opened in September 1932, and was originally called Spanish City Cinema. The exterior has a Spanish style frieze and cornices above the entrance, with whitewashed walls. The interior, designed by Theodore Komisarjevsky, features a tent-like roof, turret style projections and Moorish arches. This style was known as Atmospheric for obvious reasons, and the idea was to immerse the customers in an exotic atmosphere, giving them a total experience.
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Odeon Cinema, Ealing (1932) by Cecil Masey and Theodore Komisarjevsky. Image from dusashenka on Flickr.
Another example from Ealing is the Himalya Palace in Southall, designed by George Coles, the king of the cinema architects. Coles designed about 90 Cinemas, mostly for the Odeon chain, in a variety of styles. The Himalaya Palace, opened in 1928, is designed as a Chinese Pagoda with a red tiled roof and dragon gargoyles on the outside, and inside with chinese lanterns and decorative plasterwork in red and gold. Away from the Atmospheric style we have the Art Deco or moderne cinema. A great example of this is the Harrow Dominion cinema, designed by Fredrick Bromige and opened in 1936. The building features a magnificent art deco facade, unfortunately covered up since 1962, due to the cost of its upkeep. Plans are underway to uncover and restore the facade as part of a redevelopment into apartments. Bromige also designed the nearby Rayners Lane Grosvenor cinema, which has its streamline facade still uncovered. The frontage has a curving concrete mullion, said to be shaped after an elephant's trunk. Like many cinemas it has now been turned into a church. 
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“Speed Underground” poster by Alan Rogers. Image from Pinterest
The next building type we are going to explore is the underground station. In 1915 Charles Holden met Frank Pick, then the commercial director of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, the forerunner of London Underground. Pick wanted to revolutionize design on the underground network, bringing in a new eye-catching modernist influenced look. Pick wanted the stations to communicate speed, modernity and light. The tube network already had a chief architect, Stanley Heaps, but Pick felt his designs were not modern enough.

Holden's first step in bringing modernism to the underground were his designs for eight stations at the southern end of the Northern Line, featuring double height ticket halls clad simply in Portland stone. Holden’s next step was the Piccadilly line stations of the early 30s. With designs such as Sudbury Town and Chiswick Park, Holden managed to balance form and function, allowing passengers to move quickly from the street to the platform or vice versa, using Scandinavian influenced buildings. Holden used basic plans for these stations, usually rectangular or circular. Holden wasn't a modernist ideologue, but recognized that these forms were the most efficient and harmonious for the function of the buildings.
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Boston Manor Station (1934) by Charles Holden. Image from London Transport Museum.
Although Holden’s designs were simple in plan, this gave the buildings a recognizable silhouette, when lit up at night. Pick and Holden were impressed by the use of night time lighting on their trip to Europe and decided to implement a similar technique when designing the new Piccadilly line stations. However, Pick had other ideas. By 1934 Pick was CEO of the new London Passenger Transport Board, and wanted to expand the influence of the organization into all forms of travel in the capital. Two new stations were to be built on the Piccadilly Line, near the Great West Road, only 10 years old at that point.The stations, Boston Manor and Osterley, both differed to the design of previous stations in that Pick had pressured Holden to produce something more eye catching rather than being a function of their purpose. Pick wanted the stations to stand out alongside the new road, and attract commuters who might be tempted to travel by car or bus. 

The desire to attract attention can be seen in the design of the stations. Gone are the open ticket hall designs of Sudbury Town and Chiswick Park, replaced by low, squat buildings with tall, eye catching towers. These towers look rather like the towers on two buildings that Pick and Holden visited during a European tour in 1930, The Volharding Building in the Hague and De Telegraaf Building in Amsterdam.The Volharding building was specifically designed to allow as much advertising space as possible on the outside of the building. It was illuminated at night allowing for 24 hour adverts. The lighting of buildings in Europe impressed Pick and Holden on their 1930 trip, and they imported this idea when designing the Piccadilly Line stations of the 30s.
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The Volharding Building in the Hague.
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De Telegraaf Building in Amsterdam.
The pressure to design more eye catching stations did cause a slight rift between Pick and Holden, which was exacerbated by Holden’s preoccupation with his University of London work which kept him busy for the rest of the 30s. Another station, not by Holden, but by Herbert Welch and Felix Lander also shows a similar design to Boston Manor and Osterley. Park Royal station was opened in 1936, alongside Western Avenue in Ealing, and repeats the low ticket hall building, offset by a tall, eye catching tower. 
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The Firestone Factory, Brentford (1928) by Wallis, Gilbert & Partners.
Wallis, Gilbert & Partners were the pre-eminent factory designers of the interwar years. Established by Thomas Wallis in 1916, the practice produced a wave of factories, becoming more extravagant in design as the 1920’s became the 1930’s. The building that brought them to the attention of the architectural and wider world was the Firestone Factory on the Great West Road in Brentford. 

Completed in 1928, the art deco office building which fronted on to the road, quickly became the symbol of Firestone in Britain. Behind this facade was the actual, more down to earth production buildings, which were nevertheless meticulously planned out for the most efficient use of space and time. The factory was famously demolished on August Bank Holiday weekend 1930, as the papers to save it, sat in an in-tray at the Department of the Environment.
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Tannoy advert featuring the Hoover Factory, Perivale. Image from Graces Guide.
A few years after the Firestone factory, the practice would begin work on maybe their most famous building, the Hoover Factory at Perivale. Situated like the Firestone building, along one of the new arterial roads running into London, the factory became the symbol of the Hoover brand, projecting modernity and aspiration. Again like the Firestone building, the main administration block faces Western Avenue, with the production buildings behind. The 220ft long building has generous glazing, is decorated with colored tiles and also features Erich Mendelsohn influenced towers at each end. 

The Hoover factory did not just advertise its wares to the road in front, but also to the train line at the rear with a neon sign of the slogan “Beats as it sweeps as it cleans”. The building was also used in posters and adverts for the Hoover brand. Buildings like the Hoover Factory and Firestone building were designed not to be seen from a fixed point, but as Joan Skinner says in her book on Wallis, Gilbert & Partners, viewed by “A young man on his motorcycle and the flapper on the pillion” speeding past. These buildings were meant to be assessed in horizontal motion, with the rhythm of stripes, squares, glasswork and render altering as you change speed and your position to the building along the road. 
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Glaxo Factory, Greenford (1935) by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners. Image from Modernism in Metro-Land.
The flashy style of the building led to it being derided by some architectural critics. Nikolas Pevsner famously called it “ perhaps the most offensive of the modernistic atrocities along this road typical of the by-pass factories”. Thomas Wallis was quite honest about the commercial aspect of his designs, telling the RIBA in 1933 that “ A little money spent on something to focus the attention of the public is not money wasted but a good advertisement”. Not every Wallis, Gilbert & Partners factory was quite as extravagant, sometimes the client did not want a billboard for a building. Many of these buildings have now been converted into apartments.
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Stewart and Ardern Car Showroom, Staines (1934) by Stuart Cameron Kirby. Image from RIBApix.
Of course cinemas, tube stations and factories were not the only 1930s buildings to act as billboards for their services. Garages, showrooms and shops all tried to grab the attention of the passersby. Stuart Cameron Kirby designed a range of moderne car showrooms, such as this one in Staines. They were designed for Stewart and Arden, exclusive dealers for Morris cars in London. They set up their showrooms on the new roads into London, away from the traditional car showroom areas of Great Portland St and Piccadilly. The buildings had long plate glass windows, illuminated at night to show threat cars to passing motorists. ​
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Electricity Showrooms, Willesden (1937) by Wilkinson, Rowe & Johnson-Marshall. Image from RIBApix.
Electricity Showrooms proliferated across the capital in the 1930s, as electricity replaced gas as the main power source. The new showrooms were designed to showcase the various electrical appliances, like radios, televisions and kettles. The shops were designed in a futuristic style, all glistening chrome and shiny glass. Even priests of high modernism such as Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry were persuaded to design such buildings, as can still be seen at their shop in Cannon St, now a noodle bar. Other high street shops adopted the futuristic look, fitted out in vitro lite glass and adorned in neon. One of the most famous examples is the HMV store on Oxford St from 1939 by Joseph Emberton, with its black granite and neon exterior.
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Earls Court Exhibition Centre (1937) C. Howard Crane. Image from Architects Journal.
The new exhibition centre buildings of the 30s were also intended as giant billboards, letting passerby’s know which convention or exhibition there were hosting. Emberton designed the new hall for the Olympia centre in 1929, with its monumental streamline facade. The other famous west London exhibition centre, Earls Court was opened in 1937, with its giant concrete framed frontage able to accommodate eye catching signs.

The 1920s and 30s were the time that modernism and art deco (slowly) made its impact on Britain. It was also an era of expanded commercialisation, where advertising and what we call today “branding” started to make its way into the cityscape. These two strands combined, and have helped shape the Britain we live in today.
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The Old New Brutalism

30/11/2020

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In December 1955 The Architectural Review published an essay by Reyner Banham titled “The New Brutalism”, which defined for the first time, the bold, new architecture emerging from Britain and Europe in reaction to the watered down modernism of the immediate post war period. The word Brutalism had been used two years before by Alison Smithson in Architectural Design when describing a project for a house in Soho. The origin of the term “Brutalism” has a few different origin stories, from the straightforward (from Breton Brut, the French term for raw concrete) to the more fanciful (an amalgamation of Peter Smithson’s nickname, Brutus, and Alison’s name). 
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Alison and Peter Smithson's project for a house in Soho, 1953
The term Brutalism has come to mean any concrete building built in the postwar period, but to begin with it was much more specific, much more of a philosophy than a design guide. The main idea was “truth to materials”, i.e. not disguising the concrete or brick or steel being used in the construction of the building, but making the materials an integral part of its appearance. Banham summarizes Brutalism as “1, Formal legibility of plan; 2, clear exhibition of structure, and 3, valuation of materials for their inherent qualities 'as found'."
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Reyner Banham's 1955 Architectural Review article on The New Brutalism.
Banham’s 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, brought together influences on Brutalism such as Le Corbusier and Owen Williams, and examples from around the world. The British examples included buildings by the Smithsons, Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall, Denys Lasdun, Owen Luder, Lyons, Israel & Ellis, John Voelcker and many others.
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John Voelcker's house at Arkley for Humphrey Middleton. Image from RIBApix.
Banham was born in Norwich in 1922, and after an engineering scholarship studied at the Coulthard Institute of Arts, where Nikolaus Pevsner was one of his tutors. He was employed by the Architectural Review in 1952, where he wrote “The New Brutalism”. His criticism and theories were very influential on the post war architectural scene, through his journalism and books such as “The Well Tempered Environment”, “Theory and Design in the First Machine Age” and “Megastructures”. Banham would also go on to teach at the Bartlett, UCL and the University of California. He died in London in 1988.
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Reyner Banham on a bicycle. Image from places journal.
Brutalism fell out of architectural fashion in the 1970s as architects and local authorities moved away from tower blocks to smaller, less uniform designs, and the oil crisis hit, making it more expensive to build on such a scale. Its reappreciation at the start of the 21st century has seen its praises sung in books and blogs, on social media and even on tea towels, but it is still a highly divisive term, much misused by both friends and foes. So it is worth reminding ourselves where it came from and what it originally meant, 65 years after Banham’s article. 

You can read the original article HERE
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