Architecture
The transatlantic relationship as expressed through architecture and design
Former Ideal House, now Palladium House
Great Marlborough Street / Argyll Street, City of Westminster, London
Listed Grade II in 1981
A corner office block built in 1928-9 by Raymond Hood in collaboration with Gordon Jeeves. It has polished black granite facing and 7 storeys. The ground floor has large flat arched display windows emphasised by inlaid frames of bronze champlev enamelled plates in formalised lotus and jazz-moderne geometric patterns in a range of yellows and oranges, greens and gold. The champlev motifs appear again as a frieze pierced by the 6th floor windows and reappear on the stepped and coved main cornice and similarly coved attic cornice, each of Egyptian inspiration. This building was constructed for the National Radiator Company, and was a reduced version of the American Radiator Building on Bryant Park, Manhattan, the New York premises of the National Radiator Corporation by Raymond Hood, the parent company of the English firm. The black and gold colours reflect the livery of the company. It is a very unusual instance of a London-scaled American tower block design, embellished with the sort of Art Deco or 'Moderne' details in fashion following the Paris Exhibition of 1925. This is the only European building of Raymond Hood, described by Andrew Saint as the 'wittiest and most thoughtful of the inter-war New York skyscraper architects'.
TQ2913981129
Ashdown House School
Forest Row, East Sussex
Listed Grade II* in 1953
A house of c.1790, designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), a Sussex architect who emigrated to America in 1795. This is one of the two known works by Latrobe in England. He is one of the most important early architects in the United States, where his projects include the United States Capital in Washington DC, porticoes on the White House and Baltimore's Cathedral. He served as Surveyor of the Public Buildings of the United States from for 14 years from 1803.
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Administrative building at Heinz UK Headquarters
Hayes, London
Listed Grade II* in 1995
The Administrative Headquarters for Heinz were designed in 1960-61 and built 1962-65 by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The building has a pre-cast reinforced-concrete frame with tensioned external columns made with sparkling granite aggregate. Interior dominated by large entrance hall and canteen on lower floor, otherwise much praised combination of open-plan offices facing pool and small private offices facing park, some with original opaque glass wall panels, these and light fitments arranged on American 4' grid. This is the only British example of the work of Gordon Bunshaft, the most influential American office designer of the 1950s and 1960s, and one of only two buildings by him in Western Europe. It is also the most important early example in Britain of a headquarters building on a green-field site, praised at the time for its sophisticated planning and design and the care and quality of every detail of its high-tech finish.
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Buildings at Dartington Hall
Dartington, Devon
High Cross Hill House (Listed Grade II* in 1981)
Offices of the Dartington Hall Estate, Boarding Houses Nos. 1, 2 & 3, and Gymnasium (Listed Grade II in 1971 and 1993)
This significant group of buildings was built between 1933 and 1935 by WE Lescaze of Howe and Lescaze, the major American firm, best known for their Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) building in Philadelphia (1929-32). High Cross Hill House was the first of the International Modern Style buildings to be built at Dartington, the only place where Lescaze built in Britain.
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