You want to know why Modernist architecture never really took off in England? I’ll tell you
why Modernist architecture never took off in England. It’s the lack of blue skies, which is
perhaps also to say lack of sun.
I was walking in Stanmore last week, peering at some modernist houses (only the outsides) with flaneuse and professional walking tour guide (Jen Pedler) and we arrived in the morning when the sky was grey and there was rain in the air.
It was easy enough to see that these houses on Kerry Drive and Valencia Road, designed in the 1930s, were architecturally special but under a low grey sky they really didn’t look as fantastic as they might have.
In fact the houses are mostly built of brick and coated with Snowcrete which is still easily available. I wonder if a pure Modernist might think that was cheating.
So we wandered around Stanmore, looking at this and that, and we ended up in the Stanmore Country Park, which was surprisingly muddy in places but worth it because in the end we got this extraordinary view of London – in fact it’s called the London Viewpoint.
While we were up there the sky brightened and by a circuitous route we returned to our starting point, by which time the sun was out, the sky was blue, and the Modernist houses looked absolutely magnificent.
Of course whiteness isn’t everything. We had also taken a detour to see the house at 2, Aylmer Close, designed by Gert Kaufman in the sixties (he also designed one of the houses in Kerry Avenue).
It looks like this; not so much modernist as Brutalist
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| From Pinterest |
Not that we saw it with our own eyes. The owners obviously want their privacy, and the best view we could get of it was this:
Other attractions in Stanmore, well I can’t guarantee it’ll be there for long, but this car on Stanmore Hill, a Buick Eight:
It’s cool enough in itself but the rear number plate said “A Quinn Martin Production. Quinn Martin was the producer behind The Fugitive, The Streets of San Francisco, Cannon among many other fine TV shows.
What Quinn Martin's name (and just conceivably his car) were doing in Stanmore, I have no idea.
