The Lawns is the conversion and extension of a house originally designed by Leonard Manasseh in the ‘50’s.
The new work — mostly in glass — entirely wraps and engulfs the old house and doubles its size with expansive, double-height spaces, so that the new is played off against the old. And a complete new floor is added, replacing the former pitched roof. For historical and planning reasons the house is set well back from the street — generating a large forecourt and underscoring a space syntax that elevates the house’s status as the visitor parades to it or swings into the car area. Inside, the interior is well – organised, playing off old and new with real panache. And there is even a third generation here: the Manasseh house was built upon a retained Victorian basement, now used as an apartment for the children of the household. The house was short-listed for the Stirling Prize in 2002.
СЛ John Winter’s own home at 81 Swains Lane, 54 N6, sits opposite the gates to Highgate Cemetery (where Marx is buried). It’s a marvellous three – storey design (completed in 1969), with piano nobile at the top, bedrooms in the middle, and kitchen / family / dining on the garden level. Its rusting Corten steel cladding and large panes of clear glass peek above crusty brick walls, looking at once aged and modern. The influences are entirely North American again, this time the California Case Study houses of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, and the work of SOM, for whom Winter worked in the 1950’s (plus a bit of Saarinen on the Corten).
(You can see what Winter built for himself in 1959-61 and extended until moving to Highgate, near Regents Park, in Regal Lane.)
С С The Highpoint flats in North Road, N6 (Highgate Village) have an almost suburban location, high **** above London, with terrific views. Berthold Lubetkin and the Tecton group designed them in 1936-38 as exemplars of modern rational thinking. The first, Highpoint 1 offers us all of le Corbusier’s 5 Points (car port, piano nobile on piloti, roof garden, free plan with minimum columns, and horizontal windows), together with a splendid common hall and a plan that makes architects swoon. (And then there are those characteristic balconies.) Highpoint 2 further echoes the example of le Corbusier, with double-height studio spaces. Its entry porte coche is daringly held up by neo-classical caryatids copied from the Erectheum in Athens – a gesture that some people consider to be facetious and incomprehensible, but it certainly lifts the spirit. (Also see Bevin Court, near Kings Cross, and the Finsbury Health Centre a little further south of that.)
These two houses — Venus’ and Cargo Fleet’ — are around the corner from one another and make fine examples of how London architects (Chance de Silva) strive to make something out of difficult sites. Both serve as end-of-terrace designs and make quite a contrast with the neighbours. (Venus, left; Cargo Fleet, right.)
• Cargo Fleet: 14 Whistler Street, N5 (2004)
• Venus: 1A Elfort Road N5, (1998) Tube: Arsenal
The studio of Jo van Heyningen and Birkin 57 Haward (1998) at Burghley Yard, Burghley Road, Tufnell Park, NW5, is the conversion of a former warehouse into one of those equations that pays the studio bills. The front half has been converted into apartments and studios are provided at the rear. Intermediate structural bays have been removed to provide a courtyard in between and the rear wall has been demolished and rebuilt one bay in, in order to provide the studio with a patio. It’s necessarily an economic design, but sensitive and carefully considered. The pruning manages, for example, to retain the roof trusses and boarding, complete with the patina of age and wear, thus lending instant warmth to the simply arranged, main studio space at the upper level.
. . . And this Orion (see the Graduate Centre, opposite), Libeskind’s “spatial emblem of the Northern sky" and his “guiding light". It’s form is traditionally taken a human figure, as if a warrior with sword and shield (and, incidentally prompts all kinds of neo-Wittgenstein debate on language and signage, as if it were a diagram taken straight out of his ‘Philosphical Investigations’). Alternatively, you could draw a variety of lines between the stars and invent another, alternative, symbolism. Thankfully, Libeskind neither went that far or insinuated the mythology into the Graduate Centre design. But it is fascinating to experience the power of this arbitrary narrative on the client and users — they love it (a point on which it might be too easy and unnecessary to be cynical).
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This 700 sq. m. exercise in trophy architect branding is actually a simple and well worked out architecture with fairly minimal accommodation (two seminar rooms, a lecture room, and space to hang about and enjoy celebratory views). It is all well handled on a low budget. In principle, this accommodation is added onto a 1960’s building, meeting it at a common circulation corridor that runs in between. The lecture room is in the upper part and comes complete with a ‘constellation of Orion’ ceiling pattern to its light fittings. The building certainly brightens up this part of the Holloway Road and for those attending the University. Libeskind’s own words on the graduate centre project are both illuminating and obfuscatory; “ORION — the spatial emblem of the Northern sky — is the guiding light for developing a unique icon for the London Metropolitan University on Holloway Road. The Orion project provides a landmark attracting visitors to the cultural program within by its articulated forms. The Orion project has an enlivening impact on the wider urban context and particularly on the image and accessibility of the University. The three intersecting elements that form the building strategically emphasise certain relationships: one creates a connection between the public, the new building and the university behind, one form gestures from the university toward the tube connection to the city and one more regular form stitches the new building into the context of Holloway Road. A small plaza at the entrance provides an accent and an engaging gateway." |