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).

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

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. ​

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. ​

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. ​

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. ​

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. ​

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. ​

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. ​

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.

For the post war architectural devotee, two books published this year may be of interest. Richard Seifert: British Brutalist Architect by Dominic Bardbury chronicles the career of Seifert and explores 12 of his most famous buildings from Centre Point to the Natwest Tower. The other book is The Architectural Association in the Post War Years by Patrick Zamarian, an exploration on the role of the Architectural Association in the forming of post war architecture in Britain. Architects such as Neave Brown, Richard Rogers, Ted Cullinan, Nicholas Grimshaw, and nany, many more attanted or taught there, making it a crucible of design and ideas.

If you want to get the architecturally minded in your circle something truly important, then what could be better than membership to the 20th Century Society? The C20 have been dedicated to saving, publicizing and exploring the buildings and design of 20th Century Britain and beyond. Becoming a member means you will relieve the C20 Magazine a few times a year plus their annualish C20 Journal, discounts on a range of talks and tours, and most importantly the knowledge that your money is helping preserve the architecture you love. You can also purchase their book 100 20th-Century Gardens and Landscapes, featuring a contribution from yours truly!

Of course we can’t end with mentioning our own Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land. If you haven't got it already, we think it is the essential guidebook to discovering the modernist treasures of London’s suburbs. Featuring chapters on 9 London Boroughs and 2 counties plus maps, descriptions of each building and colour photographs. You can get your copy HERE. 

J.G. Ballard was born on 15th November 1930 in the Shanghai International Settlement, where his father was managing director of a subsidiary of Calico Printers Association, a Manchester textile company. Following the outbreak of war and his internment, the basis of his book Empire of the Sun, Ballard and his mother and sister returned to Britain, where he studied medicine. After a spell in the RAF, Ballard took up his writing career, starting off selling short science fiction stories to magazines like New Worlds and Science Fantasy, before publishing his first novel in 1961.

Ballards output of short stories and novels, which ranged from 1961 until his death in 2009, continuously tackles the problems of architecture and the built environment, with his protagonist often cast as architects and frequent mentions of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright in his early short stories. His most famous work that tackles architecture is the 1975 novel High Rise, whose main character is the titular building, where civilization crumbles as the architect sits in his penthouse flat. The building in High Rise was said to be influenced by the Barbican Estate by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, and the architect character, Antony Royal, supposedly based on Erno Goldfinger.

The new building at Hornsey featured a two storey building in pink brick with a rectangular tower at the junction of the L-shaped front that looks onto the small green. The exterior has long first floor windows with bronze balconies, above a triple door entrance. The tower also features Portland stone decoration by Albert J. Ayers. Inside, the building contained the council chamber, committee rooms and offices. The interior was finished with wood panelling, etched glass screens and metalwork balustrades. ​

Their partnership was dissolved in 1938 with Chermayeff moving to the United States in 1940 (Mendelsohn would move a year later). Apart from his works with Mendelsohn. Chermayeff left behind a number of other buildings in Britain; a house in Rugby (1934), the Gilbey Office and Factory in Camden (1937) and his own house in Halland, Sussex (1938), all now listed. The offices for the Gilbey Wine and Gine company are situated at the junction of Jamestown Road and Oval Road in Camden, and Chermayeff and Samuley designed the foundations with cork insulation to protect the wine from road and rail vibrations. His own house, Bentley Wood in Halland, was designed with a timber frame of jarrah wood, with the grounds landscaped by Christopher Tunnard.
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He spent the next 35 years teaching at various institutes, including Havard, Yale, MIT and the California School of Fine Arts. He designed and built his own house in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and spent time there painting. He had two sons, Peter who also became an architect and Ivan, a prominent graphic designer. Chermayeff died in Cape Cod in 1996.

By the late 1920s, Wallis, Gilbert & Partners had already been practicing for around 12 years, designing factories and industrial buildings all over Britain. Two of those buildings were in nearby Hayes, for the Gramophone Company and Hayes Cocoa, but the Firestone commission was to be their most prestigious project yet. The design, which was submitted in February 1928 and altered over the next 6 months, consisted of a main administration block facing the Great West Road with the single storey factory building behind and a four storey dispatch and storage building further back. The journey of the raw material started in this four storey block, journeying through the production block before exiting as tyres back through the four storey building. 

Of course it is the art deco office building which people conjure up when they think of the Firestone building. The building was to act not just as an administration centre but also as an advert for the company and for what we would these days call its “brand”, looking to project speed, glamour and aspiration. The building was a mix of Classical allusions. In plan it was a Greek or Roman temple with its row of columns along the frontage, in detail it was Egyptian, with references to the gods Horus, Ra and Amun in its decoration. Egyptian design was still popular 6 years after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter in 1922. By night the building was floodlit, producing a spectacular landmark along the Great West Road.  ​

Now all that survives of the building is the gateway and perimeter fence, although there are three other Wallis, Gilbert & Partners designs nearby; the Coty Factory, the Pyrene Factory and the Sir William Burnett workshop. Of course, the Firestone Factory wasn't the only art deco building demolished along this stretch. A peruse of the area on the Britain from Above website reveals a number of interesting looking buildings of the period, all now sadly gone. However, the Firestone Factory did not die in vain, its demolition led to a renewal of interest in buildings of period and their preservation, enabling us to enjoy some of the great designs of Wallis, Gilbert and Partners from the golden age of factory design.

The 20th Century Society still plays an important role in preserving the best buildings of the last 100 years. Help it prevent more demolitions like the Firestone Factory by becoming a member HERE

References
Form and Fancy by Joan Skinner
London: North West by Nikolas Pevsner and Bridget Cherry

White Walls, White Heat, our photobook featuring 24 art deco and modernist factories from across London is available now, get yours HERE

Further west, Holden was asked to design a new station at Hounslow East, having also designed Hounslow West in 1931. Holden’s design here was a “Sudbury Box” style station with a tower that abutted the above ground railway viaduct, just as at Alperton. The station design was approved by London Underground CEO Frank Pick in June 1931, but construction never started. The station retained its 1909 station building until 2003 when it was replaced by a new station by Acanthus Lawrence and Wrightson Architects. 

On the other branch of the westen Piccadilly line to Uxbridge, Holden had developed a modular station design that could be used at different locations along the extension. This was never used, like Holden’s various designs for a station building on the awkward site at Hillingdon, where again the old station building survived until 1993, when it was replaced by the new station by Cassidy Taggart. 

One more Piccadilly station worth mentioning is Cockfosters. Opened in 1933, the station as built has modest street level buildings with one of Holden’s best interiors at platform level; all exposed concrete, looking forward to post war brutalism. The original plan for the station would have seen two brick towers either side of the Cockfosters Road, where the current buildings are, a grand terminus building for the new settlements around Trent Park that were stopped by the Green Belt Act.

The design for Redbridge was to take the glass theme even further, with an almost totally translucent ticket hall, and an all glass tower incorporating a glass etching from the Paris 1937 Exposition. Obviously this would prove too expensive post war, so the building was finished with brick and tile. Thankfully the next station along, Gants Hill was less affected by shortages, with its Moscow Metro inspired platform area left alone. What it did lose, was a brick clock tower at street level, that would have sat in the roundabout above the underground ticket hall.

​Of course, Holden’s most famous unbuilt project is his designs for the University of London. Holden had been appointed to design a new complex of buildings for the University, who wanted to move from Kensington. Holden designed a proto-groundscraper, covering the whole area from Montague Place to Torrington Street. Construction was started in 1932, but funds for the whole project ran out, and the only completed part is now the Grade II* listed Senate House and Library. 

We have plenty of underground stations, and an array of other buildings like substations, signal boxes and depots,all designed by Charles Holden in the golden period between 1925 and 1940, but it's always interesting to think of what might have been…. Next stop Elstree South!

References
Bright Underground Spaces by David Lawrence
Underground History website