 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.
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 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.
 The LLoyd's Building. Image from archiexpo The Lloyd’s Building in Lime Street was officially opened on 18th November 1986 by Queen Elizabeth II. Designed by Richard Rogers and Partners, the radical inside out plan is the epitome of the High Tech drive to maximise a buildings usable space by separating services from the purpose of the building. Air conditioning ducts, electrical conduits, water pipes and lifts are all placed on the outside of the structure, allowing maximum floor space for the insurance brokers and agents of Lloyd’s. In the 35 years since its completion the building has been widely praised, becoming one of the few post war buildings to be granted Grade I listing.  Michael Webb's design of a HQ for Furniture Manufacturers Association Lloyd’s of London had originally been based in the 1928 building at 12 Leadenhall by Edwin Cooper, before moving in 1958 to a new building across the road at 51 Lime Street. The 1928 building was incorporated into the Rogers structure, as was the Committee, or Adam Room, an 18th century dining room by Robert Adam that had been part of the 1950s building. Rogers design emanates from the ideas of Bowellism, formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s, by the founders of Archigram, particularly Michael Webb, whose project for a headquarters for the Furniture Manufacturers Association in High Wycombe featured precast concrete cells inserted into place on a skeleton frame with ducts and pipes carrying utilities were needed.  Design for the Lloyd's Building by Richard Rogers. Rogers used these ideas in his Pompidou Centre in Paris, designed with Renzo Piano, which opened in 1977. The structure featured colour coded utilities on the exterior (green for plumbing, yellow for power cables, etc), freeing up the exhibition space inside. Rogers and Piano had won the competition to design the building against a wide field of the world's architects. The construction took 6 years, and the completed building was met with puzzlement and sometimes outright hostility. However the impact of the building was felt far and wide, with cultural and financial institutions looking for eye-catching, iconoclastic designs for their new buildings.  The Captain's Room Restaurant by Eva Jirinca. Image from Chris Rogers The Lloyd’s building consists of six towers, (three of which carry services) around a rectangular space. The removal of the services from the internal space allows each floor to be flexibly planned and easily changed according to the company's needs. The interior is lit by an atrium with a glass barreled roof, with the Underwriting Room at the centre of the building. Eva Jirinca designed the Captain's Room restaurant, using fabrics arranged to evoke the billowing of a ship's sails, in recognition of Lloyds’ nautical roots. Jirinca’s designs were removed in 2000. The building was bought by the Chinese insurance company Ping An in 2019, and there are plans to redesign the interior of the building to account for the post pandemic, digital age.
Like many municipal authorities in London immediately after World War II, the highest priority of the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green was to rehouse those whose homes had been destroyed in the previous 6 years. Over 5000 people were living in temporary homes in 1946, many prefabricated structures, with the last of these still to be housed 20 years later. A mass house building programme was launched all over Britain, but especially in the east of London. This led to Bethnal Green commissioning some of the most interesting and radical designs for mass housing in Britain. Architects both storied, such as Berthold Lubetkin, and emerging, like Denys Lasdun, designed estates to house those made destitute by the war and to look forward to a brave new world. The first estates to be completed in Bethnal Green after the war were those that had already been designed before the war by the London County Council Architects Department. The Minerva Estate opened in 1946 with accommodation for 1000 people, and was built in reinforced concrete. The first estate to be designed and built in Bethnal Green post war was the Park View Estate by De Metz and Berks for the L.C.C., which opened in 1951, with 267 flats. The most interesting part of the estate is the community centre, now known as the Glasshouse, with its scalloped concrete roofline, and cantilevered first floor.  Minerva Estate (1946) L.C.C. Architects Department. Image from Bethnal Green in Focus Building continued through the 1950s with a succession of estates designed by a combination of the L.C.C., Bethnal Green’s surveyors department and private firms. These estates were solid but unspectacular designs, but by the end of the decade a number of schemes would turn the attention of the architectural world towards the borough. Berthold Lubetkin had been one of the preeminent modernist architects of the 1930s in Britain, producing designs such as the Penguin Pool at London Zoo, the Highpoint Flats in Highgate and Finsbury Health centre, all high points in the decades architecture. The post war years saw the dissolution of his Tecton practice and a new partnership with Francis Skinner and Douglas Bailey. After the completion of the three estates delayed by the war in Finsbury (Spa Green, Priory Green and Bevin Court) the trio designed three more estates for Bethnal Green.  Plans for Sivill House by Berthold Lubetkin. Image from RIBApix The first to be opened was the Dorset Estate in 1957. It is situated between Hackney Road and Columbia Road, and featured 8 housing blocks in its original plan (all named after the Tolpuddle Martyrs), with the most eye-catching being the two Y-shaped blocks of George Loveless and James Hamnett houses. The blocks feature the patterned facades in concrete that would become the partnership's trademark in the post war years. The estate also features a circular library and community centre and a pub, originally called The Royal Victoria. The 20 storey Sivill House point block was added in 1966, six years after Lubetkin's retirement but he had provided designs for the tower in the late 1950s.  Lakeview Estate (1958) Skinner, Lubetkin & Bailey. Image from Tower Block. A year after The Dorset Estate opened, the Lakeview Estate was completed next to the old Hertford Union canal. It is on a much smaller scale than the Dorset estate, but the materials and design make it instantly recognisable as a Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin scheme. The main focal point of the state is the 11 storey apartment block, with its geometrically patterned facade. There are also four 2 storey old peoples homes in the grounds facing onto the canal. The estate was built by the borough's own direct labour force. The third estate for the borough by Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin is Cranbrook, between the Old Ford and Roman Roads. Opened in 1964, the estate is set around Mace Street, a figure of 8 road, with the 6 tower blocks, 5 smaller terraces and bungalows, all arranged in a stepped sequence to allow maximum sunlight throughout the day. The blocks themselves are constructed of concrete and faced with grey brick, with the tower blocks enlivened by bright green concrete struts and tiles. The grounds were designed to give a trompe l'oeil view of Victoria Park (now blocked by a neighbouring development) and also feature Elisabeth Frink’s “The Blind Beggar and his Dog” sculpture.  Cranbrook Estate (1964) Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin. Image from RIBApix. Just a little to the south, the second phase of the Greenways Estate by Yorke, Mardall & Rosenberg was opened in 1959. The first part had been designed by Donald Hamilton, Wakeford & Partners, opening in 1951. The new section by Yorke, Mardall & Rosenberg added a series of five storey blocks, constructed of reinforced concrete, faced in precast panels with stone chippings. Shops or lock ups were situated on the ground floor of each block. Next to the Greenways estate are two blocks that left behind the rectangular form of most apartment schemes of the era, in favour of something more daring. Sulkin House and Trevelyan House were designed by Denys Lasdun, then with Fry, Drew, Drake & Lasdun, and completed in 1959. The two cluster blocks are eight storeys in height, with maisonettes angled around a central service tower. This design produced a high density housing scheme with minimal disruption to the existing street plan and reduced demolition. Lasdun also designed the more regular flanking four storey blocks as part of the scheme, recognizable as Lasdun projects due to their bold concrete staircases.  Usk Street Estate (1959) Fry, Drew, Drake & Lasdun/ Image from Art & Architecture. The cluster block design was repeated by Lasdun at another scheme, Keeling House in Claredale Street (1960). Here the scale is much larger, 16 storeys instead of 8, with 56 two storey maisonettes and 8 studio flats arranged in 4 towers around the service core. The effect on the streetscape is (or maybe was) more pronounced than at Usk Street, with Keeling House rising dramatically out of the surrounding streets of terraced houses. A lower rise block, Bradley House was also built as part of the estate, but this was demolished in 2005. Keeling House was sold by Tower Hamlets Borough in 1999 and turned into private apartments, with a glass foyer added at ground level, as well as eight penthouse flats on the top service floor.  Music Hall, Mayfield House (1964) Kenneth Wakeford, Jerram and Harris. Image from Roman Road LDN. A couple of other noteworthy projects were completed by the Municipal Borough of Bethnal Green, before it was subsumed into Tower Hamlets in 1965. St Peter’s Avenue is just west of Keeling House, and the new estate there was built between 1964-7. It features 5 six storey blocks containing 174 dwellings, constructed of concrete with brick infill and bold concrete balconies and ventilation towers. On Cambridge Heath Road is Mayfield House, opened in 1964 as a mixed residential and work scheme, with flats, shop units and striking gallery at one end. There are 54 flats in a six storey block, which was designed by the partnership of Kenneth Wakeford, Jerram and Harris to include facilities such as a music library and recital hall in the building. Unfortunately the glass clad gallery has been boarded up since 2014, with various campaigns since to reinstate the windows.
The Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green became part of the new London Borough of Tower Hamlets in 1965. In the 20 years from the end of World War II to its abolition, the borough had built over 1500 dwellings, helping to rehouse much of the thousand of people made homeless by the war. The rebuilding effort also saw the standard of dwelling raised, away from the cramped Victorian terraces and tenements, towards a (brief) brave new world. 55 Broadway was officially opened on 1st December 1929. Designed by Charles Holden as the new headquarters for the London Transport Board, it replaced the previous hodge podge of buildings the board used in the same area. The new building brought together different departments under one roof, allowing faster communication and creating a corporate atmosphere. As well uniting the company under one roof, the building would also contain St James Park tube station. Holden, and his firm, Adams, Holden & Pearson, were appointed to the design in 1925, after an initial plan by Sir A.E. Richardson was rejected by LTB director Frank Pick for being too old fashioned.  55 Broadway as seen from above, shortly after completion. Image via Mikey Ashworth. The site chosen for the building was an awkward, asymmetrical plot, hemmed in by other buildings. To counteract these problems, Holden arranged the building in an irregular cruciform plan, with a long east-west axis and a shorter north-south one. The upper floors step up, getting smaller in floor area as it gets to the top. This allows natural light into each office, as well as allowing more light down to street level. The services such as lifts and ventilation were built into the central tower core. Holden had previously specialized in the design of hospitals when he joined the firm of Henry Percy Adams (later to become Adams, Holden & Pearson) at the start of the 1900’s. This experience was to provide useful in creating the large, integrated design of 55 Broadway. Another influence on the design was that of the fifteen-storey General Motors Building in Detroit (1919-22) by Albert Khan, also designed to allow sunlight and air to each of the buildings numerous offices.  General Motors Building, Detroit (1919-22) by Albert Khan. Image fom CardCow 55 Broadway is constructed around a steel frame encased in concrete and then clad in stone. Portland Stone, a material Holden had used on a smaller scale for London Transport in his Northern Line Extension stations a few years earlier, was used from the 3rd floor upwards, with blue-green Norwegian granite for the first and second floor. Inside, flooring of Travertine limestone forms three paved public arcades and covers the staircases, with bronze used for the railings. Each floor contains a drinking fountain and an automatic mail chute, details picked up from American office designs of the time.  London Transport poster featuring 55 Broadway. Image from RIBApix The exterior of the building was decorated with a range of sculptures, produced by a number of different artists. Reliefs depicting “The Four Winds” were sculpted by Eric Gill, Henry Moore, Alfred Gerrard, Eric Aumoinier and Sam Rabinowitcz. Jacob Epstein, who Holden had previously worked with on the British Medical Association building on The Strand and Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Paris, designed two sculptures, Day and Night, which proved controversial. Day in particular drew heavy criticism, with a campaign started to have it removed. Pick, despite his initial reservations to employing Epstein, offered to resign to loyalty to Holden, but it was refused. Eventually 1.5 inches was removed from the statue to appease the complainers.  Henry Moore carving 'West Wind' on 55 Broadway. Image from London Transport Museum. When it opened, 55 Broadway was, at 176 ft the tallest building in London. The top 4 floors were kept unoccupied, as they were above the limit decreed by the 1894 London Buildings Act. The Observer newspaper called it “The Cathedral of Modernity”, and it was widely praised as the harbinger of English Modernism, balancing Arts and Crafts detailing with new building technology and American design.
It has served as the headquarters of the London Transport and then TFL for 90 years, but that time is drawing to a close. A 2015 plan by Tate Hindle to convert the building to flats and offices came to nothing, and in September this year TFL agreed a deal to sell the property to the Integrity International Group, who have not yet announced their plans for the building. 55 Broadway was Grade I listed in 2011, and so whatever its future, the building should stand as a marker of the journey of British architecture from Art and Crafts towards Modernism. References Charles Holden: Architect by Eitan Karol Bright Underground Spaces by David Lawrence Buildings of England: London 6 City of Westminster by Nikolaus Pevsner and Simon Bradley |
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