 Centre Point, three months after completion in 1966. Image from RIBApix. Centre Point, the 34 storey tower that looms over the junction at the east end of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, turned 60 this week, having been officially opened on 19th May 1966. The building had been commissioned by developer Harry Hyams, who had begun his career as an estate agent before going into speculative development just at the point when building licenses had started to be granted more liberally as the material shortages of the immediate post war years let up.  The Woolworth Building, Marylebone Road. An example of the Seifert style from before Centre Point. The architects for this new development was Richard Seifert and Partners, who also enjoyed the fruits of the post war office building boom, becoming the go to firm for speculative offices, even more so than their rivals like the Owen Luder Partnership or Ronald Ward & Partners. Although they had designed offices like the art deco-esque Woolworth Building on Marylebone Road in the late 1950s, the following decade would prove to be the partnership's golden period with geometric, Pop Art-influenced designs by senior partner George Marsh dominating the capital's skyline. Marsh had been one of the founding members of the practice in 1958, and became the lead designer on a number of buildings over the next 30 years including Centre Point and its sister building Space House, also built for Hyams, and completed in 1968.  An early design for Centre Point. The completed project would keep the layout, but change the form of the tower. Image from RIBApix. Hyams had bought up the plot of land which connects with the northern end of Charing Cross Road in the late 1950s as part of a deal with the London County Council who wanted to modernise the road layout at this junction of three famous London roads. Hyams was able to keep a small but valuable plot for a building, with him leasing it back from the LCC for 150 years. The reduced space at ground level meant that the building needed to be very tall to have enough floor space to allow Hyams to make the substantial profit he wanted. A 9-storey podium block with maisonettes, showroom, shops and pub is connected by a glazed link building to the visually dominant office tower, influenced by the Pirelli Tower in Milan, completed in 1960. Constructed of Y-shaped structural units, the tower terminates with a crinkled roofline and name sign, just above the top floor. The units were manufactured in Dorset and transferred to site overnight, allowing the tower to be built quickly, with a storey completed every week.This method of prefabricated construction also eliminated the need for large amounts of scaffolding. The smaller Y shapes are echoed at street level by six large mosaic-clad supports. The lift towers and service ducts were placed at opposite ends of the tower, allowing for an open floor space of 50 by 90 feet. Construction on the lower block began in 1961, with the design of the tower going through revisions until 1963.  The Centre Point fountains, designed by Jupp Dernbach-Mayen, now removed. Image from Flickr. Engineering for the project was undertaken by William Frischmann of Pell Frischmann, with the building constructed by Wimpey. Aside from the small size of the plot, the construction was also complicated by the existing maze of sewers. pipes and tunnels serving the adjacent Tottenham Court Road tube station. Stability for the giant tower was achieved by using closed packed piled foundations and relatively light, thin floor slabs in the building itself. At the foot of the tower was a fountain and water feature designed by German designer Jupp Dernbach-Mayen, also featuring the Y shape in the fountains themselves. This was unfortunately removed in 2009, but given a new home at the Architectural Associations campus in Hooke Park Devon. The remodelling also removed the opened concrete staircases that led up from street level on either side of the tower.  An advert for Centre Point from 1968. Image from Flashbak.  Centre Point being occupied by protesters, February 1974. Image from RIBApix. Of course the design of Centre Point is only half the story. Despite being completed in 1966, the office block was left empty by Hyams until 1974, as he sought a single tenant to take the building at a price he thought was correct. This led to Centre Point becoming a symbol of inequality, with a homeless charity named after the building and it being occupied by protesters in 1974. Hyams eventually partially relented and let the office to a number of tenants, but the building was never fully let out. The Confederation of British Industry was based at Centre Point from 1980 until 2014, when it was bought and converted into luxury apartments, having also been remodelled in 2000. The building was listed in November 1995.
0 Comments
 Skylon towering above the Festival of Britain South Bank exhibition site. Image from RIBApix. The Festival of Britain officially began on 3rd May 1951, as the Labour Government sought to turn the nation's minds away from the carnage of the Second World War, and towards a brighter future. The main exhibition site was on the south bank of the Thames in London, previously home to warehouses, workshops and terraced housing. The exhibition on the there was overseen by the festival's Exhibition Presentation Panel, whose members included the Festival’s Director General Gerald Barry, the Director of Architecture Hugh Casson and designers such as Misha Black. They planned a showcase of various aspects of British life, spread over a number of pavilions designed by young architects of the time. These pavilions included Sea and Ships by Basil Spence, The Land of Britain by H.T. Cadbury-Brown and The New Schools by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. The centerpiece of this site was the Festival Hall, designed by the architects department of London County Council, with a team including Leslie Martin, Robert Mathew and Peter Moro. But the most eye-catching buildings were the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon.  The Dome of Discovery. Image from RIBApix. These two futuristic structures were situated on the other side of the Hungerford bridge to the Festival Hall, where the Jubilee Gardens now are. The Dome of Discovery was designed by Ralph Tubbs, and as befits the name, was a dome-shaped exhibition center made out of aluminum and concrete. It had a diameter of 365 feet, and its interior was divided into 8 sections, each dedicated to British initiative in a different physical realm.The sections were The Land, The Earth, Polar, Sky, Sea, Outer Space, The Physical World and The Living World. Its circular form and division into learning zones was obviously a great influence on the Richard Rogers’ Millenium Dome, built 48 years later.  Technical drawing from the Vertical Feature, later named Skylon. Image from RIBApix. Towering above all, even the 1826 shot tower incorporated into the site, was the Skylon. Standing 300 feet high, this “Vertical Feature” was designed by the partnership of Phillip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, fresh from designing the Churchill Gardens estate on the other side of the river, and winner of a Festival of Britain merit award. The partnership had been formed in 1946 after they had finished their studies at the Architectural Association, along with Philip’s brother Michael, who left for London County Council in 1950. They won the competition to design the vertical feature for the festival, something of no practical value, but that would give the exhibition a visual flourish. Or as the Architects Journal put it “the Powell-Moya Skylon, one of several features of the exhibition which are, happily, completely useless, in no way symbolic and altogether pleasant to have about the place”.  Powell and Moya, standing in front of the Skylon. Image from RIBApix. Alongside engineer Felix Samuely, Powell and Moya developed what would later be named the Skylon. The cigar-shaped structure was formed from steel and aluminium latticework, supported by cables attached to three steel beams, set at an angle, with the downward point of the structure sitting 50 feet above the ground. The sections of the structure were manufactured by Painter Brothers of Hereford, and assembled on site, as can be seen in this film. The name Skylon was itself assembled from a mixture of the words Skyhook and Pylon, as a result of a competition won by Margaret Sheppard, who proposed the name.  The Skylon, as featured in a contemporary advert. Image from Pinterest. Like the events held all over the country for the Festival, the South Bank exhibition was very popular, with nearly 8.5 million visitors attending the site over the summer of 1951. However the Festival was not popular with the Conservative government, led by Winston Churchill, which won the general election in October 1951. They ordered the South Bank site to be dismantled, including the Skylon and the Dome of Discovery. The plan for the area was for it to be redeveloped, as happened over the next 30 years, with the building of the Queen Elizabeth Hall complex and the National Theatre, and the cost of dismantling and reassembling the Skylon was deemed too high. Both the Skylon and the Dome of Discovery were sold to scrap merchant George Cohen, Sons and Co, who took the parts to their premises at Canning Town to be dismantled. Parts of the two buildings were used to make commemorative cutlery, which can still be found for sale online. The idea of rebuilding the Skylon has been floated, with the Royal Academy supporting a proposal in 2004, however with space now at a premium on the South Bank and the London Eye now dominating the skyline, nothing has come of it, or is likely to.
 Simpsons of Piccadilly Menswear store. Image from RIBApix, For 90 years the former Simpsons menswear store on Piccadilly has been the epitome of elegant modernism. It was commissioned by the clothing firm, which had been established in Stoke Newington in 1894 by Simeon Simpson. His son, Alexander, took over the firm and introduced the DAKS self supporting trouser line, deciding that a West End showroom would be the best place to showcase the new product. The architect commissioned to design the new store was Joseph Emberton, who was responsible for two of the earliest prominent public modernist buildings in the country, the New Hall at the Olympia Exhibition Centre (1929) and the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club at Burnham on Crouch (1931). Emberton was also well versed in designing shops and exhibition stands, so was the perfect man to bring Piccadilly into the age of modernism.  The staircase and light fitting. Image from RIBApix. The store was built on the site of the former Geological Museum, which had been moved to Kensington, next to the Natural History Museum, with frontages onto both Piccadilly and Jermyn Street. The building was built using a steel frame, engineered by Felix Samuley, although his initial plan to use welded steel fell foul of London County Council who told him to alter it. After the structure was finally put in place, a Portland Stone finish was added, inter set with five bands of horizontal windows. These windows face north, and were installed with extra lighting in red, green and blue neon tubes, allowing additional illumination into the showroom, which could also be mixed depending on the hue required. The windows contained non-reflective glass, avoiding unwanted glare on the shop floor. The street entrance on Piccadilly has a cantilevered canopy of glass blocks and the street level windows are concave and set in black marble. Echoing the canopy above the entrance is the much larger concrete canopy on the fifth floor, also including glass bricks, which shades a balcony area below.  The mens outfitting area. Image from RIBApix. Inside, the building is divided into three parts, with most of the space given over to showrooms, but also containing a basement storage area and offices on the upper floors. Connecting all these sections is the staircase, finished in travertine steps, a plate glass balustrade and wooden handrail. In the centre of the staircase is a light fitting in metal rods and circular lamps, which hangs down 90ft through five floors. The side wall of the staircase is also finished in glass bricks, helping to bring light into the various different rooms of the store. Samuley's steel frame construction method allowed the floorplans to be open and flexible, with less supporting columns than was usual for a building of the time. Graphic designer Ashley Havindean designed the logo for the store, (which uses the P from the middle of Simpsons to begin Piccadilly), as well as the interior rugs and carpets.  One of the aeroplanes installed by Lazslo Moholy Nagy. Image from RIBApix. Havindean wasn't the only famous designer used to bring some finesse to the store. Hungarian photographer and artist Lazslo Moholy Nagy, former professor at the Bauhaus and emigre to Britain from 1935, was commissioned alongside Gyorgy Kepes to design the displays and signage for the store, and he installed three aeroplanes on the fifth floor, in a bid to get the curious passersby into the shop. Much of the furniture and fittings was designed by Emberton himself, including shelves, storage racks, chairs and display tables. The Jermyn Street side, which was designed in a simple Portland stone finish and a large rectangular window at first floor level, was extended in 1957. A few years later a staff room was added at roof level by Leo de Syllas, a member of the Architects Co-Partnership, in lightweight steel with an exterior spiral staircase to the terrace that looks to have taken its form from a similar staircase Emberton designed for the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club. Emberton’s simple but classic design has endured through various changes in retail design. Even in the 1960s, an advert for the brand would highlight the store's design as “spacious, light and airy”, calling it “London’s most modern store”.The building was listed in September 1970, and in 1999 it was converted into a branch of Waterstones bookshops, which it remains to this day.
 St Paul's Bow Common. Image from RIBApix. Voted Britain's best modern church by the National Churches Trust in 2013, St Paul's Church in Bow Common, Tower Hamlets is one of the most famous and architecturally significant post war churches in the country. It was officially opened on April 20th 1960, replacing a Victorian church destroyed in the Blitz, designed by the partnership of Robert Maguire and Keith Murray. They also helped found the New Churches Research Group alongside others such as Peter Hammond, which promoted the reform of both Anglican and Catholic church design, away from the traditional ecclesiastical plan, towards integrating congregations further into religious services, and making the services more relevant to modern life. St Paul’s would become a flag bearing design for this reform. Maguire had worked for church architect Laurene King from the age of 16, and then attended the Architectural Association to complete his design studies. After graduating and working for the Architects Journal for 4 years, Maguire formed his partnership with Murray, designing a number of modernist churches in Britain, as well as student housing at the University of Surrey and at Trinity College, Oxford. Murray trained at the Central School of Art in London as a silversmith, and helped create Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher’s cope for the 1953 coronation.  The font with the interior of the church beyond. Image from RIBApix. Although St Paul's was Maguire and Murray's design, its existence was largely thanks to Father Gresham Kirby, who had been appointed to the church in 1951, when it was still a bombed ruin. He had seen a freestanding altar designed by Murray at St Katherine’s Chapel in nearby Limehouse and knew that it would fit with his vision of the new church. The eminent church architect N.F. Cachemaille-Day had already been lined up to design a new church for St. Pauls by the Diocese, but Father Kirby had Murray talk to the rebuilding committee and he was given the commision. Murray and Maguire presented plans and models to the Diocese in October 1955, with construction finally beginning in December 1958. The delay in starting the new church was mainly due to lack of funds, which meant the ruins of the previous church needed to be cleared before the new one could be started.  The ciborium above the altar. Image from RIBApix. The church as designed by Murray and Maguire is square in plan, with a raised altar placed in the centre of the building underneath a glazed lantern style cupola. Apart from the cupola, the only windows in the church are clerestory windows, producing a dramatic interior atmosphere full of light and shadows. The congregation is arranged on all four sides around the altar, and the font, an industrial stone vat, is situated in the entrance porch. Like the font, the other fixtures and fittings are in a tough, industrial style. The ciborium above the altar is made from black steel and the light fittings in a similar style.  The entrance to the church with Ralph Beyer's carving. Image from Conway. The interior also has mosaics by Charles Lutyens, (great nephew of Edwin), added after the building was completed. The artwork represents the “Heavenly Host”, with twelve angels represented using a palette of 700 colours in individual mosaic tesserae. The structure of the building is formed from a concrete frame with purple Uxbridge brick infill, and an eye-catching zig zagging concrete slab roof. The entrance has a prominent inscription above the porch “TRULY THIS IS NONE OTHER BUT THE HOUSE OF GOD - THIS IS THE GATE OF HEAVEN'' carved by artist Ralph Beyer. Beyer, who also worked on Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral, handcrafted each letter and imprinted them in wet cement.  St Joseph the Worker, Northolt (1970). Image from RIBApix. The building was rapturously received by the architectural press and beyond. Critic Ian Nairn included in his 1966 book “Nairn's London”, calling it “burningly honest but not aggressive” and “completely fresh” and “truly original”. Nikolvaus Pevsner in his London East book praised it but also noted that Canon Basil Clarke, priest and architectural historian, commented that it “looks like a rather seedy stable yard”. Maguire and Murray went on to design a number of churches, including St Matthew's Perry Beeches, Birmingham (1963), Church of the Resurrection at West Malling Abbey (1966) and St Joseph the Worker, Northolt (1970).
The duo also completed the vicarage for the church, which was not ready at the time of opening, and in 1971 designed an associated primary school behind, which like the church, took an innovative approach to planning, with a combination of open plan and classroom areas using a structure adapted from an agricultural shed design. Inevitably it was nicknamed “the pig sty”. St Paul’s was listed in March 1988 and is now at Grade II*. The church underwent essential repairs between 2015-16 with support from the Heritage Fund.  233 High Holborn by night. Image from RIBApix. On High Holborn at No.233, just around the corner from the underground station, is a building that has a claim to be London’s first modernist building and almost certainly the first modernist office in the country. It was built for the W.S. Crawford advertising company in 1930, partially replacing and extending an older building. John James Burnet and his associates, most prominently Thomas S. Tait produced a series of office buildings from 1910 to 1930 that took their inspiration from the skyscrapers of America rather than the temples of Ancient Greece. The Kodak Building on Kingsway from 1911, had long vertical windows in between Portland stone cladding. Adelaide House (1925), looks over the Thames with an art deco influenced facade, again with a strong vertical emphasis. The Daily Telegraph building on Fleet Street (1928), leans into the Jazz age even more, with its colourful clock and Egyptian decorations. Charles Holden’s new HQ for London Transport was officially opened on 1st December 1929, with its monumental form looming over St. James Park. But none of these buildings truly took on the spirit of modernism like 233 High Holborn.  The entrance hall and staircase, with its shiny metallic finish. The Crawford building presents a bold facade to High Holborn with horizontal bands of render, separated by continuous glazing with slim metal mullions. The rows of windows allow light into the office floor from the north-facing facade, and allows a deeper floor plan, by using prismatic glass which spreads light to the further reaches of the office. The building turns into the alley, New Turnstile, running alongside, with a chamfered corner. The original interior, now sadly lost, was perhaps even bolder, with steel and chrome used throughout, to create a futuristic setting. Despite its modernist credentials, no concrete was used, with a steel frame infilled with brick panels, and the external render in cement. The ground floor is finished in polished black marble with large, square windows and double entrance doors in steel. Through these doors, visitors would be greeted by a hall clad in stainless steel, illuminated by various hidden light sources, and with a green floor in artificial Roman stone.  A corridor and waiting area. Image from RIBApix. The upper floors, containing the offices, meeting rooms and drawing areas, were designed by artist Rodney Thomas with less dazzle but still in a moderne style, with strip lighting and streamlined detailing. One ingenious inclusion was the integrated waste chute, needed to dispose of the large amounts of waste paper generated each working day. The paper, which was often chucked onto the floor, was simply swept into floor level doors and funnelled down to the basement to be incinerated. The architects for this groundbreaking building were Fredrick Etchells and Herbert Welch. Welch seems to have been the designer initially given the commission and carried out the first designs for the building, before Etchells was asked to design a facade that was more in the spirit of “The New Style”, which had emerged from the continent in the years after the turn of the century. Welch had begun his career as an architect working for London and North West Railways before going to work for Parker and Unwin on the development of Hampstead Garden Suburb. He later worked on the garden cities of Letchworth and Welwyn where he met his later partners Felix Lander and N.F. Cachemaille-Day. His early work was thoroughly steeped in the Arts & Crafts tradition before moving gently into modernism in the 1930s.  The Yews, Fetcham (1933) Frederick Etchells Etchells career took the opposite trajectory. He came to fame as an artist, aligning with the Vorticists and producing murals for Borough Polytechnic. In 1927 he translated Le Corbusier’s Vers Une Architecture into English as Towards a New Architecture, an endeavor that later created controversy as it was felt that the new text was overly altered from Corbusier’s original. Aside from the Crawford building, Etchells designed a handful of modernist houses, including two in the aborted modernist development at Frinton on Sea. He then turned away from modernism towards more traditional styles, producing a number of neo-Tudor designs in Westminster. He devoted his post war work mainly towards restoration, especially to churches that had been damaged during the Blitz.  The Daily Express Building, fleet Street (1932). Image from RIBApix. Either side of Crawford's are two contemporary office buildings. On the east side is No.235, built as offices and showrooms for the Times Furnishing Company, and designed by Cecil J. Eprile in an art deco style, with vertical window bands that contrast with its more horizontally inclined neighbour. On the west side is No.232, a slightly later (1939) copy of Crawfords by Welch and Felix Lander. After the completion of 233 High Holborn, a number of new, modernist-influenced office buildings sprang up in London. The Daily Express building on Fleet Street, just down the road from Tait’s Daily Telegraph, was completed in 1932. The initial design by Ellis and Clarke was thought to be too staid, so Owen Williams was brought in to add a futuristic black Vitrolite frontage to the building. On the opposite side of the river to Adelaide House, architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel designed St Olaf’s House as a new HQ for the Hay’s Wharf company in 1932. The Tooley Street facade has horizontal windows with angled metal frames and the building's name in gilt lettering.  One of Edward McKnight Kauffer's poster designs for London Transport. Image from London Transport Museum. The company of Crawford’s itself has a place in the acceptance of modernism in Britain. Formed in 1914 at a different location on a building in High Holborn, the company produced many advertising campaigns for the government and official bodies in the interwar years, led by the sisters Margaret and Florence Sangster and Ashley Havinden. They often used a high visual style, moving away from the text-heavy poster style employed at the beginning of the century, using artwork influenced by modernist and futurist styles. Havinden himself produced work that took cues from cubism and the Bauhaus for clients like the Post Office, Chrysler Motos and Simpsons of Piccadilly (whose own premises was designed by Joseph Emberton with interiors by Laszlo Mohloy Nagy). Havinden and Maragret Sangster had married in 1928, and could count various artists and architects as friends, including Wells Coates, Walter Gropius, Paul Nash, Eillen Agar and many others. In 1938 they moved into the newly completed Highpoint II in Highgate by Berthold Lubetkin. The designer Edward McKnight Kauffer, who designed so many great posters for the Underground, worked for Crawford’s at the time the new office was opened. Crawford’s remained at 233 until 1972 when it moved to Westbourne Terrace, later being acquired by Saatchi and Saatchi. The Crawford building was listed in August 1971, among the first group of modernist interwar buildings to receive statutory protection.  Finsbury Health Centre From 1934 until its dissolution in the London Boroughs reorganisation of 1965, the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury proved a radical and far-sighted body. After the 1936 Public Health (London) Act gave local authorities more power to control healthcare within their boundaries, the Labour run council introduced its “Finsbury Plan”, an attempt to eradicate the problems that plagued the borough both in health and education. To do this they commissioned modernist partnerships such as Berthold Lubetkin & Tecton and Emberton, Franck & Tardew, to produce housing estates, health centers, libraries and other buildings to enhance and protect the lives of the population of the borough.  Your Britain, Fight for it Now by Abram Games The first building in this plan was Finsbury Health Centre, opened in 1938, after Dr. Chuni Lal Katial, Chairman of Finsbury’s Public Health Committee, had seen a design for a health centre in East Ham by Tecton at the 1933 British Medical Association Congress, (that centre was not built in the end). Lubetkin and the other Tecton architects produced a centre in a H-Plan with two wings with glass bricks flanking a curved entrance. This plan was used to allow sunlight into the building all through the day, avoiding the Victorian style of central courtyards that usually produced dark, gloomy views. Inside, the centre featured TB and foot clinics, a solarium, a dentist, a decontamination zone and a mortuary, as well as a lecture theatre and murals by Gordon Cullen. The centre’s ethos was summed up by Abram Games’ 1943 poster, “Your Britain, Fight For It Now”, featuring the shiny new centre in front of a dilapidated yard containing a malnourished child.  The Spa Green Estate. Image from RIBApix. Lubetkin and Tecton would also design three new housing estates for Finsbury as well as the health centre. Before that building had been completed, Tecton was given the commission for an estate between Rosebery Avenue and St John Street, to be called the Spa Green Estate, replacing an area of slum housing. Like the other estates, building for this scheme was postponed at the outbreak of World War II, with Spa Green not completed until 1949. The estate has three apartment blocks, two of eight storeys and one of four storeys, containing 126 flats of varying sizes. They are formed from concrete egg crate box frames, developed by Ove Arup & Partners as consultant engineers, with the flats in the blocks arranged so each one has an aspect on each side of the building, increasing the amount of sunlight it receives through the day.  The Priory Green Estate. Image from RIBApix. To the north of Spa Green, another estate was built from 1947, replacing the Busaco Street slum with the Priory Green scheme. The new estate had 12 blocks of flats laid out to match the previous street pattern, along with a circular laundry and boiler house. The estate contained 279 flats housing over 1000 inhabitants, including space for all of those displaced by the previous clearance, with no flats facing north, ensuring they would receive some portion of direct daylight each day. Tecton also designed a scheme on what was Holford Square, just to the south of Pentonville Road. The estate's most striking feature is Bevin Court, an Y-shaped block of 130 flats, with a stunning central staircase, which Pevsner calls “one of the most exciting C20 spatial experiences in London”, as well as an entranceway mural by Peter Yates. The block was to originally have been called Lenin Court, in recognition of the fact that the Soviet leader had lived in Holford Square during his exile in London between 1902-03. The ardently socialist Lubetkin had designed a memorial to Lenin which stood on this site from 1942, but it had been repeatedly vandalised and damaged. The remains of the memorial were eventually incorporated into the block's foundations.  The staircase at Bevin Court. Image from RIBApix. Tecton disbanded in the late 1940s, as Lubetkin started his ill-fated tenure as chief planner to Peterlee New Town. The reins in Finsbury were taken first up by venerable ‘30s modernist Joseph Emberton, who designed the austere Stuart Mill House in Killick St in 1951, the Stafford Cripps Estate on Old Street in 1952, with its three Y-shaped blocks of 12 storeys and the Brunswick Close Estate on Percival Street in Clerkenwell. Built from 1953, this scheme was even larger with three blocks of 14 storeys, with a total of 207 flats, arranged with green space between the towers. Emberton passed away in 1956 and ex-Tecton partner, Carl Ludwig Franck became principal architect, with the company renamed Emberton, Franck and Tardrew. The practice would design a swathe of new estates for Finsbury before it became part of Islington in 1965. They began with Mulberry Court on Tompion Street (1962), a curved block of six storeys with an aerofoil drying station on the roof, then the Pleydell Estate on Radnor Street with two blocks of 17 storeys and the O.M. Richards Estate (1962-65) on Donegal Street, where prefabricated units were used for the first time.  The interior of Finsbury Library. Image from RIBApix. The last two estates of the Metropolitan Borough era were the largest, the schemes at Kings Square, Goswell Road (1961-65) and on Skinner Street (1964-68). The Kings Square estate is dominated by the 20-storey Turnpike House, whose size is alleviated by the archway at the bottom of the tower allowing transit underneath and into Kings Square Gardens, with a direct view of the 19th-century St Clements church. Smaller blocks of six storeys and two storeys are placed on the north and east sides of the square, and a paved shopping area borders Lever Street and Central Street. The Finsbury Estate between Skinner Street and St John Street was the borough's last hurrah. The central feature is the 25-storey Michael Cliffe House with the lower Patrick Coman House and Central Library with its convex facade behind, and the long Charles Townsend house to the south (all the blocks were named after members of the council). Franck included a pedestrian pathway through the estate right under the large tower block and out onto Skinner Street through a concrete gateway.  The entrance to Rahere House on the Kings Square estate. Image from RIBApix. The Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury became part of the new London Borough of Islington on 1st April 1965. Franck continued his work in the area, now in partnership with Douglas Deeks, designing tall blocks such as Peregrine House and Kestrel House, very much in the vein of his Finsbury work. The Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury pioneering spirit to tackle poverty, disease and ignorance through new buildings were taken up by the new boroughs such as Camden under Sydney Cook and Lambeth under Edward Hollamby, now considered exemplars of the golden age of social housing.
 The London College of Printing and the Faraday Substation at Elephant and Castle. Image from RIBAPix. The Elephant and Castle area of South London was substantially rebuilt after the Second World War, when it received bombardment from the Luftwaffe, suffering great damage and loss of life. Known as the “Piccadilly Circus of the South” in the interwar years, the area needed almost total rebuilding after 1945. This redevelopment, which took place from the 1950s through to the mid-1970s, created a panorama of post war modernism, much of which is now being erased by developers. After a redevelopment plan for the area was included in Patrick Abercrombie 1943 County of London Plan, London County Council planner Walter Bor oversaw a scheme for the existing roadway to be reorganised and widened and the adjoining land developed into housing, shops and a college, with work beginning in 1956 with revisions by Leslie Martin and then Hubert Bennett. The result was never greatly loved, and quite often reviled. Pevsner called it “one of the least loved creations in London” and Ian Nairn remarked that the designs all spoke of architecture as “a Deadly Serious Business” (his capitals).  The County of London Plan from 1943 by Patrick Abercrombie In the centre of the 1960s roundabout is the Electricity Substation, designed by Rodney Gordon whilst working for London County Council. The stainless steel box is supported by an oversailing column and beam frame. Gordon’s design originally had the box clad in glass revealing the workings of the transformer, but the fear of vandalism led to the change to steel. Gordon would soon after leave the LCC to go and work for Owen Luder, designing a series of buildings that combined offices, shops and flats such as Eros House in Lewisham. The substation was listed in June 1996.  Drawing for Alexander Fleming House and the Odeon Cinema, Elephant and Castle. To the north east of this is Erno Goldfinger’s Alexander Fleming House (1962-67) office block, originally built as speculative offices and occupied by the Ministry of Health, now converted to apartments and renamed Metro Central Heights. Four tall blocks, linked by glass clad walkways are arranged around a central piazza with a reflecting pool, with a pub on the street side. Next to this was the Odeon Cinema, also designed by Goldfinger, a replacement for the Trocadero Cinema which was demolished for the new scheme. This cinema, now demolished itself, had a concrete and tile exterior with an auditorium to seat over 1000 customers under a cantilevered roof. The cinema closed in July 1988 and demolished a month later. The plot was used for car parking until a new block for Metro Central Heights was added in 2008. The former office block was listed Grade II in July 2013.  The Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre and Hannibal House. Image from RIBApix. Opposite this, another demolished building sat, the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, which was opened in 1965, and designed by Paul Boissevain and Barbara Osmond, who won the competition for the scheme over starrier names such as Erno Goldfinger, Owen Luder and Richard Seifert.. The centre consisted of a three storey shopping area and a ten storey office block, Hannibal House, above. The building was built in reinforced concrete with the exterior walls clad in plate glass with metal frames, with GRP cladding added to the first floor in 1975. The centre was home to 120 shops and had a two level underground car park. The office block initially struggled to attract tenants and was eventually rented by the Ministry of Works. The shopping centre was turned down for listing in 2018 and demolished three years later.  Perronet House, Elephant and Castle. Image from perronethouse.com The London County Council Architect’s Department also contributed a number of housing blocks to the area, such as Draper House and Perronet House. Draper House was built as part of the Draper Estate (1962-5), consisting of the 25-storey Draper House and four smaller blocks of 5 storeys, alongside a day centre. Castle House, a block of shops and offices, was also built as part of the scheme, and was praised by Ian Nairn, but was demolished to make way for the monumental Strata tower of 2007. Perronet House was built in 1969, overseen by Roger Walters of the Greater London Council Department of Architecture and Civic Design, as the department had become in 1965. The 11-storey block sits on the north east side of the roundabout, with the flats arranged in a split level scissor section over 10 floors with the ground floor made up of shops, which now house some of the traders displaced by the shopping centres demolition. The LCC also designed the London College of Communication (originally London College of Printing) with its 14 storey tower from 1961 and later extensions along Oswin Street that added angled windows, allowing more natural light into the design studios, quite possibly designed by the architect of Pimlico School, John Bancroft.  The Heygate Estate, Elephant and Castle. Image from Reddit. A little to the east, the Heygate Estate built between 1970-1974, overseen by architect Tim Tinker alongside Rick Mather and John Kesteven for Southwark Council with over 1200 dwellings. The estate was made up of five 12 storey long straight blocks connected by walkways, with terraced housing and communal gardens in the centre. As with many estates of the era, like the nearby Aylesbury estate, a spiral of neglect and dilapidation led to the estate gaining a bad reputation, although this was rejected by many of the residents and the architect himself. Nevertheless it stuck and the New Labour era of regeneration saw the estate earmarked for demolition, with the building finally destroyed in 2014 after years of objections by residents.
The beginning of the 21st century saw the dreaded ”Masterplan” being drawn up for the area, with a budget of £1.5 billion set aside to redevelop the area. This entailed the demolition of many parts of the area's post war history, including the Heygate Estate, sections of the Draper estate and the Shopping Centre. In their place has emerged a slew of tall apartment blocks, with little or no social housing. Next to be redeveloped is the London College of Communication, which will move across the roundabout to part of the new shopping centre, leaving only a few remnants of the post war rebuilding of this area.  The western block of Robin Hood Gardens seen across the Blackwall Tunnel approach road. For 50 years the Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar has drawn praise, criticism, derision and scrutiny, much like its designers, Alison and Peter Smithson, did in their lifetime. As the last remnants of the estate are demolished we look back at how and why this divisive monument to modernism was built, and why it will soon vanish.  The Economist Offices, St James Street (1965) The estate was commissioned by the Greater London Council, a prodigious builder of new housing since 1945, when it was the London County Council. The inhouse architects departments of these two organisations designed the lion's share of the capital's new estates, but outside architects were often commissioned to design municipal projects, most notably Erno Goldfinger whose Balfron Tower is just a stone's throw away from Robin Hood Gardens. The Smithsons came to fame with their design for Hunstanton School in Norfolk (1954), a pared down retort to the Scandinavian flavoured modernism of postwar British architecture. The next 15 years saw more column inches than completed projects, with their largest building being the Economist Offices (1965) in St James Street.  The Smithsons' plan for Robin Hood Gardens, featuring the central green area and mound. The idea for an estate in the area had first been proposed in 1963 on what was then Manisty Street, home to the 19th century Grosvenor flats, built as part of previous slum clearance effort. The site was later expanded with Robin Hood Lane as its eastern boundary from which the estate would take its name. Over the next few years the site and brief were altered until a plan for 214 homes housing 700 people in two long slab blocks running parallel to the Blackwall Tunnel approach road were confirmed. In between these two slabs would be a green area, a ‘stress free’ area protected from the chaos of city life by buildings of the estate. In the middle of this area a mound was created using construction debris, creating a focal point for the space and a feature for the estate's children.  Plans, sketches and ideas for Robin Hood Gardens An important part of the design of the estate were the block’s ‘streets in the air’, external access decks that the Smithsons hoped would become inhabited and used just like the terraces of neighbouring streets. This idea was first introduced by the Smithsons for their Golden Lane Estate competition entry in 1952, eventually won by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. The depth of the walkways were to be sufficient so “Two women with prams can stop and talk without blocking the flow..”, and children would be able to play outside of their flats. Alongside the Smithsons, the recently deceased Christopher Woodward and Ken Baker helped design the project. The flats were arranged so the living areas and kitchen/dining rooms were largely facing away from the main road and towards the garden area. All flats, except for those for the elderly on the first floor, were on two levels with the bedroom placed either above or below the entrance floor. The exterior of the two blocks featured modulated concrete facades, another attempt to deflect noise from the busy parallel road.  Robin Hood Garderns under construction. Image from Iqbal Aalam on Flickr. The Smithsons had approached the design of the estate in typically unconventional style. They researched the area's history back to the start of the 18th century, taking interest in the trades, residents and buildings that made up the neighbourhood. They also took brass rubbings of old street plaques, produced photomontages and even a mosaic made up of shards of china originally used as ballast by ships in the nearby docks. The materials used for the construction of the estate were unapologetically brutalist, with the blocks formed by a mixture of insitu and prefabricated concrete, overseen by engineering consultants Ove Arup & Partners. The systems part of the construction employed the Sundh slab method, developed by Swedish engineer Ernst Sundh, with the contractors Walter Lawrence & Son responsible for this and the construction of the whole site.  The central, 'stress-free' area in use by the children of Robin Hood Gardens. The estate was completed at the point at which the tide started to go out for large, systems built concrete housing schemes. Architectural, social and financial opinion had turned against them in favour of smaller projects, largely made up of houses in brick with pitched roofs, as seen with the later Thamesmead phases. Vandalism was a problem from the start on the estate. The four outside play areas were damaged soon after opening and left unrepaired. The Smithsons were slightly bewildered at this violence against their design, seeing it as a reaction against consumer society rather than their buildings. This violence was matched by the local authorities' indifference to the upkeep of the estate. As seen elsewhere, the estate and its buildings were left to deteriorate until deemed not fit for use. Tower Hamlets drew up plans to demolish Robin Hood Gardens in 2008, as part of the regeneration of the Blackwall Reach area. Preservation campaigners and architects condemned the plans and launched a campaign to save it. Listing was turned down by English Heritage and a Certificate of Immunity was issued, barring any listing for 5 years. Another attempt at listing was made after this time had elapsed but was again turned down. The block on the western side of the site was demolished in 2017. The Victoria and Albert Museum salvaged a three storey section and other parts of the estate, but they have not yet been put on display. The remaining parts of the estate were cleared in 2022, the end to 50 years of Robin Hood Gardens. References
Alison and Peter Smithson (Works and Projects)- Marco Vidotto Alison and Peter Smithson (Twentieth Century Architects)- Mark Crinson Buildings of England: London East We are delighted to introduce a guest blog by Peter Wyeth, celebrating 90 years of Victoria Coach Station....  Belgravia today seems a most unlikely location for a major coach station, but in 1930 it was the perfect location, virtually opposite the railway terminus. An earlier coach station had outgrown itself by the 1920s and the 1 & 3/4 acre site was purchased on 2nd September 1930. The architect Thomas Wallis, who had designed the famous Firestone art-deco factory on the Great West Road, produced a design for a 400 foot long building. Ninety years on it is worth realising what a great leap forward the Victoria building was. The modern image of the new coach station gave an immense boost to the image and respectability of the rapidly developing industry. The Coastal Coach Company Ltd, who commissioned the design, really only needed the ground and first floors, but the decision to add three floors above transformed it into a statement on the street to exceed the nearby Victorian eponymous railway terminus. Early plans for a hotel were replaced by office accommodation, christened Coastal Chambers.  If the steam train was a creature of the nineteenth century, the coach belonged firmly to the twentieth. The sleek, art-deco exterior was only part of the story. Architect Wallis’s father was a bricklayer and his son was passionate about creating good working conditions for staff. His detailed attention to lighting, heating and ventilation was ahead of its time, and the bright and airy offices above the accommodation for 150 coaches and a 62 line telephone exchange were soon let, despite the crash of 1929. On 10th March 1932, the opening ceremony was conducted by the then Minister of Transport, with the unbelievable name of John Pybus, and attended by 250 guests. The contrast between top-hat and tails, the period bus and the modern building behind is striking.The same day saw the inauguration of the London to Glasgow night bus, a fourteen hour journey, powered by a diesel engine; another first as, hitherto, all long-distance coaches were petrol-powered.  A Bristol coach at Victoria Coach Station, 1961. Image from Classic Buses. The building received national and international acclaim for its design and concept. Along Buckingham Palace Road were shops at ground level, including a tobacconist with a hairdressing salon above it on a mezzanine floor. Along Elizabeth Street are a newsagents, a quick-service bar and buffet bar, and above, on a mezzanine floor, a lounge bar. The executive offices and oak-panelled boardroom were located on the first floor, above the main entrance. On the first floor was a large 200 seat restaurant with a dance floor and extensive kitchens. The restaurant was painted in the very 30s colour scheme of pale green and pink with a gold spray, and the excellent dance floor was a particular attraction. Coastal staff had their own restaurant where they could get a square meal for one shilling (5p), and a staff recreation room at the top of the building. As eating habits changed, by the late 60s the restaurant finally closed. The glory days of the 1930s were long gone, but the art-deco exterior remains a cheerful reminder. Peter Wyeth is a film-maker, a runner-up for the Grierson Award: 'Twelve Views of Kensal House (After Hokusai)', plus a TCM drama Award: 'Pane'. Author of The Matter of Vision (2015), and a writer on Architecture & Design (26 articles for The Modernist). He is developing a documentary on the discovery of a Roman Road in Wales: Stradland. His latest book, The Lost Architecture of Jean Welz is published on 11th August https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-lost-architecture-of-jean-welz/peter-wyeth/9781954600003
This article was first published by the Belgravia Society and is kindly reproduced here with their permission. To find out more about the society, visit their website here https://www.thebelgraviasociety.com/  Brave New London poster by Hans Unger. Image from London Transport Museum. “Look up at the bold and uncompromising buildings of today. At no time since 1666 has London had such a fresh and sudden skyline” We have previously looked at the postwar rebuilding of Bethnal Green and White City, seeing how those areas rose from the literal ashes. We now turn to look at the centre of the capital and how the city remade itself into Brave New London. In 1960 London Transport issued a leaflet and poster highlighting the new architecture springing up across the capital. They were both designed by artist Hans Unger, who would later design some of the Victoria Line tilework, (read more on his life here). The leaflet listed a number of buildings recently completed across the city from the Alton Estate in the west to Span estates in Blackheath in the east. Of the 24 buildings listed in the leaflet, 5 have been demolished outright and a couple more have been refurbished. The remaining buildings are intact and largely listed. Some of the buildings featured are still considered classics of their time, whilst others have slipped into obscurity. We will examine all of them here.  Peter Robinson Store, Strand (1959) by Denys Ladun. Image from RIBApix. Starting with the demolished buildings, the two headliners are Owen Williams’ Daily Mirror building and the Peter Robinson store by Denys Lasdun. The Daily Mirror building at Holborn Circus was built between 1955-61, providing a new headquarters for the newspaper. It was the last building Willaims was involved with before retiring, with the firm of Anderson, Forster & Wilcox designing the exterior and interior finishes. The building was deemed surplus to requirement in 1994, when the paper moved to Canary Wharf and was demolished. The Peter Robinson building (1957-9) was a five storey department store on Strand, with an exterior palette of glass, stone and bronze. The ground and first floor were the sales floors, with the top three floors consisting of offices. The building was demolished in 1996.  State House, High Holborn (1960) by Trehearne & Norman The other demolished buildings are; Bucklersbury House on Cannon Street by Owen Campbell-Jones offices demolished in 2010, Moor House on London Wall another office building, this time replaced by a Terry Farrell design, State House on High Holborn by Trehearne & Norman and Quintin School in St John’s Wood by Edward D. Mills & Partners, demolished in 2014 for a Van Heyningen and Haward design. The refurbished projects include Eastbourne Terrace (1958) in Paddington by C.H. Elsom & Partners, an office complex refurbished by Stiff & Trevillion in 2016. Thorn House on Upper St Martin’s Lane by Basil Spence has also been given a makeover. The 15 storey building was opened in 1959 for Thorn Electrical Industries and featured an eight foot high exterior sculpture by Geoffrey Clarke. The building was refurbished in 1990 by Renton Howard Wood Levin, the partnership founded by the building's original job architect for Spence, Andrew Renton.  Alton West Estate (1959) by LCC Architect's Dept. The remaining, existing buildings are largely housing estates with a few schools and offices included. The most famous schemes on the list are the Alton Estate in Roehampton and the Golden Lane Estate in the City, now both icons of early postwar modernism. Lesser heralded estates include Highbury Quadrant (LCC, 1954), Lansbury (L.C.C, 1951) Sceaux Gardens (1959) and Munster Square (Frederick Gibberd, 1951). Aside from Sceaux Gardens, designed by the architects department of Camberwell Metropolitan Borough Council in a typically Corbusian style, the other estates showcase a Scandinavian influence, which was more widespread in the early postwar period. This schism was laid bare at the aforementioned Alton Estate, when the two competing factions of the LCC housing department faced off across the slopes of Roehampton. The eastern section was designed by a team under Rosemary Stjernstedt in the Scandinavian idiom, with the western sector designed in what would become the dominant New Brutalist style of the 1960s. This team for this section was made up by the future founders of Howell Killick Partridge & Amis, as well as Roy Stout later of Stout & Litchfield.  Soviet Trade Delegation Housing, Highgate (1957) by Eric Lyons & Partners. Image from RIBApix. Two Span estates are also included on the list, Parkleys (1956) at Ham Common and The Hall and Corner Green (1957-9) in Blackheath. Span Developments was founded by Geoffrey Townsend in 1956 to create speculative, modern estates influenced by Scandinavian design. Houses were usually flat roofed, two storeys high and arranged in terraces. Apartment buildings were usually no more than four storeys with open plan interiors. The company's estates, designed by Eric Lyons & Partners, became very popular with new schemes being built all over London’s suburbs and the Home Counties. Parkleys is one of the best known of Span’s estates, with the housing spread around mature trees and hedges, allowing the estate to flow and be part of its neighbourhood. Another Lyons project featured in Brave New London was his housing for the Soviet Trade Delegation in Highgate (1957), which includes a four storey apartment block in exposed concrete and brick with a nursery and an assembly hall.  Castrol House (19590 by Gollins Melvin Ward & Partners. Image from RIBApix Away from housing there are four office blocks in the guide. Congress House on Great Russell St was designed by David du Reiu Aberdeen for the Trade Union Congress, opening in 1957. Aberdeen had won the competition for the building in 1948 with his design featuring large areas of glass on the ground floor, a granite and blue tile exterior and an inner courtyard with a war memorial by Jacob Epstein. The building was refurbished between 1996 and 2019 by Hugh Broughton Architects, upgrading facilities and restoring original materials. Castrol House on the Marylebone Road (now Marathon House) was completed in 1959 as offices for the oil company. It was designed by Gollins Melvin Ward & Partners, and was one of the first American style post war skyscrapers in the country. The building is arranged in the slab and podium manner, with a 16 storey tower next to a lower podium block, and a glass curtain wall finish. The building has now been converted to apartments with the curtain walling curtailed to allow domestic occupation.  Design for Shell Headqaurters Entrance (1960) by Howard Robertson. Image from RIBApix. The other two commercial buildings are the Sandersons offices and showrooms and the Shell Building on the South Bank. Sanderson House (1960) in Berners Street was designed by Reginald Uren of Slater, Moberley and Uren, with a glass curtain wall as at Castrol House and a courtyard garden. The building's most interesting feature is the stained glass panels by John Piper. Sanderson House was listed in 1991 and turned into a hotel in 2001. The Shell Building (1960) was designed by Howard Robertson as headquarters for the Shell oil corporation. It was built on the site of the recently cleared Festival of Britain and was criticised for its dull design, being finished in Portland stone rather than concrete or glass. The building was arranged in two sections, an “Upstream” building and a “Downstream” building. The upstream building was a 27 storey tower with adjoining 9 storey wings (the wings have been demolished). The downstream building, separated from the tower by the railway, is a 10 storey L-shaped block with a curved range, now converted into apartments.  Bousfield School (1956) by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon The last couple of buildings on the list are designed for the younger generation of the time. Bousfield School (1956) in Chelsea was designed by the partnership of Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, known for the designs of Golden Lane and Barbican estates. The school features curtain walling with coloured panels and a spherical concrete water tower in the grounds. Holland Park School was designed by D. Rogers Stark of the LCC, to house 2000 pupils on a site that was formerly part of the Georgian era Phillimore estate. The school buildings were arranged in long ranges of four storeys, built in dark brick with glazed stair towers. The 1950s building was demolished at the start of this century, with a new school building opened in 2012. Holland Park Youth Hostel is included along with the school. The hostel was opened in 1959, designed by Hugh Casson and Neville Conder on the site of Holland Park house, partially destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing. The final building on the list is Gardiner’s Corner, which seems to have been a department store at the junctions of Chapel Street and Edgware Road, probably where the current Tigris House is.  The leaflet showcases a rising new metropolis, with bombsites and grimy Victorian buildings supplanted by high rise structures of concrete, steel and glass. Of course this transformation did not meet with universal acclaim, with many observers worrying that Old London would be replaced by mini Manhattan. The London Transport Board would continue to boast of the capital's new architecture with the publication of Modern Buildings in London by Ian Nairn in 1964, a slim but thorough roundup of modernist buildings on the extended transport network from the 1930s to the mid 1960s. As we have seen, much of what is “Brave New”, quickly becomes “Feeble Old” and disappears for something more up to date. But in buildings like the Alton Estate, Golden Lane, Bousfield School and others we can still see a glimpse of the future as seen from 1960.
|
RSS Feed
