Grand plans

Rationale dominates this month’s archive – of Charles Jencks’ Thematic House, new town housing and how to maximise the impact of a new HQ for the ever-growing London University

25 years ago
The Architect, February 1987. Post-modernist critic Charles Jencks writes notes for visitors to his ‘thematic house’, designed with Terry Farrell and others
This nineteenth-century house in London took six years to convert into the Thematic House, from designs started in June 1978. Over this period we tried to develop a symbolic architecture which has both domestic and wider meanings. There are many themes used as a basis for design, some purely architectural, such as the variation of the Window Order, and others which are non-architectural, such as the notions of time and evolution.

The stairway is very much the centre of the house, in function and sign, and we keep coming back to it. Looking down, the radiating trades and curving metal handrails descend into Eduardo Paolozzi’s Black Hole and whirlpool galaxy; upwards they rise into light which floods down from the transparent solar disc set in the roof above the central well. This programme is not only traditional but logical to spiral stairs, inspired by Inigo Jones’ circular stairway at the Queen’s House.

This building was designed as a collaborative effort under my basic direction. I did the first and second project designs; the Terry Farrell Partnership, Maggie and I worked for two years on the main scheme; Piers Gough and Michael Graves designed independent elements; and then I designed most of the interiors. The Johnny Grey Partnership and Ilinca Cantacuzino carried through complex designs of mine and several artists worked to symbolic programmes which I wrote.

100 years ago
RIBA Journal, February 1912. Where to put the HQ of the expanding University of London? The location was spot on for once, but as built it didn’t turn out quite like this
Some proposals have been put forward regarding a site for the future housing of the University of London. Four plots of land on the Duke of Bedford’s estate are suggested. It is extraordinary how completely suitable the disposition of the land appears to be for the purposes required. The four plots lie two on each side of a noble avenue leading from the north face of the King Edward VII extension of the British Museum.

One of the most urgent needs is a great Assembly Hall worthy of the University and able [to serve as] a great meeting place for the metropolis where the nation and the Empire can come into touch with the University life, where great intellectual movements can be initiated or encouraged.

The plan would be equally well adapted for a Senate House, a building [with] large rooms for the governing body of the University and for the meetings of the many committees which deal with the University work.

It is difficult to over-estimate the effect which a great group of University buildings of the kind described would have upon the public attitude towards the University… immediately contiguous to the priceless stores of artistic, literary and archaeological material in the British Museum. It will cost a good deal of money, but London is full of rich men, and this is a great opportunity for what Lord Rosebery has called the ‘magnificent citizen’.

Editor’s note: neither the ‘noble avenue’ nor the great assembly hall was built. But the university moved to the site, and in 1930 Charles Holden built the Senate House here.

50 years ago
RIBA Journal, February 1962. LCC architect-planners Oliver Cox and Graeme Shankland discuss innovative housing ideas for Hook in Hampshire
Many social problems of new towns and similar communities arise from lack of balance in the type of population they naturally attract. In fairly rapid succession, such towns have to meet abnormally high levels of demand for first primary and then secondary school places, followed by juvenile employment and other needs of young people, and homes for newly-marrieds. Young married couples looking for their first home together have been attracted to the new towns. Families in middle aged groups have not – they are more settled.

We think it possible to attract and assimilate more older people. Mixing older and retired people among young families is not only desirable socially, but creates housing need of a different kind. This diversifies the initial housing ‘pool’ and eases the task of housing later.

The central area needs [to be]directly accessible to as many as need to get to it. It must also be compact and intimate, and its shopping continuous. A linear form meets all these needs best. 

The whole inner town which absorbs 60,000 of the town’s total resident population is one and a quarter miles wide and three miles long. Nobody need walk for longer than ten minutes to get to the central shopping area, and it takes only the same time walking outwards to reach open space and open country.

Editor’s note: The Hook plan was dropped in favour of expanding Basingstoke. Shankland Cox became a leading private practice, still active today.