Summary Background of Influences on Eric Lyons and Span Developments and Templemere
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Summary background of influences on Eric Lyons and Span Developments and Templemere Architectural thinking in the late 1950s was that buildings were an integral part of modern art and design “Using modern materials and construction, part of a socially minded society, designed as abstract compositions without the burden of applied historical styles”. This was the Modern Movement coming from the Bauhaus (J. strike, 2012) although the reality for the post-war economy was that good materials were in short supply; there was a need for cheap housing and a British reticence to adopt anything new, particularly when it came from Germany. The look of brutalist architecture, “Was one of uncompromising, repetitive hard-edged geometry, most often using unpainted grey concrete as the primary material” (P. Evans, p. 8, 2010). Concrete was considered to be both economical and a ‘natural’ material. During the late 1950s and early 1960s it was utilized to build “Streets in the Sky” such as the blocks at Park Hill Estate, Sheffield (which steadily declined but is now a listed building and renovated). Much of new development at that time was for public housing but private housing developments gradually grew in number. Styles were mainly simple with large front picture windows, flush exterior doors and shallow pitched roofs. Concrete panels or rough-hewn stone were occasionally used to add textural variety. There was also a revival of the terraced town house in Georgian style. The architect, Eric Lyons (1912-1980) was concerned with the more humane aspects of domestic architecture. In 1937 he had briefly worked in the same office as Walter Gropius (founder of The Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany) who had come to England in 1934 and became his disciple. Lyons’ designs were, “a modern return to the ideals of C18th speculative housing using the pattern book repetitive model” (N. Bingham in B. Simms, p. 1, 2006) After World War II he had re-formed a working partnership with Geoffrey Townsend an architect who then resigned membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) so that he could become a developer and create Span developments. Lyons had trenchant views on planning laws which he thought were a form of domestic tyranny giving “the architecturally ignorant the right to impose their uninformed views on the aesthetics and social requirements of any proposed building” (N. Bingham in B. Simms, p. 11, 2006). Lyons had campaigned to become a member of the Council of RIBA in order to make his voice heard. He served for almost thirty years from 1959, being its President from July 1975 to 1977. The ethos of Span was “to span the gap between the suburban monotony of the typical speculative development and the architecturally designed, individually built residence that has become (for all but a few) financially unattainable”. (J. Woudstre in p. 35, B. Simms, 2006). Whilst Eric Lyons designed for other development companies 60% of his work was for Span. One criticism was that Lyons’ architectural concepts were romanticism but his schemes were not just copies or re-workings. They placed people into communities within landscaped parkland, providing open spaces to be used for community living. A brief article in the architects Journal commented on the EXhibition “Eric Lyons and Span” which was shown at RIBA in 2006. It commented “He built affordable houses in clumps which de-individualise the separate dwelling”. It was always the intention of Span that residents should take an active interest in the management of the estates, both socially and in looking after buildings and grounds, “ to make sure that the principles driving the project were propogated, and that distracting personalisations of shared space were prevented”. The book which was published as accompaniment to the EXhibition makes very interesting reading because its essays describe all the influences that led both to Eric Lyons vision and Span Developments and abounds with descriptions of the various developments together with plans. There is also an interesting short video here http://www.thenbs.com/topics/designspecification/videos/eric_lyons_and_spa n.asp Span built eXtensively around Weybridge, Surrey and Templemere is the first and best known development there. It was built on land that was originally part of Oatlands Chase which surrounded Oatlands Palace in the Tudor era. The land with its ruined palace eventually passed into the hands of the Duke of Newcastle in 1730. The duke had the grounds altered by landscape architect William Kent, to include a circular temple above Broadwater Lake (also created for the Duke and designed to mimic the look of a river). When the estate was sold (in lots) during 1846 Templemere house (which incorporated the temple of Vesta) was one of three large houses built overlooking the Broadwater. Eventually Templemere house and its estate was also sold and its buyers subsequently sold it, in March 1961, to SRL Investments Ltd, who created the current estate through Span developments. Previous developments had utilized courtyard gardens but it was realised that this would not work here as the houses had to match the C18th landscape. A new house type, L1, was created with an octagonal shape and linked houses were built in outward facing groups. 65 houses were built in 1963 and the estate won a Civic Trust award in 1964. Eric Lyons gave a lecture to RIBA in 1968 where he eXplained that:- It was not until we moved on to a beautiful site at Weybridge that we started having enough confidence to move away from the kind of external spaces we have been creating. Because of the enormous scale of some splendid cedar trees on the site I attempted to approach the problems of spatial organisation quite differently, to try and create less defined space. The space flows on like a water course and loses itself in all directions bubbling around the trees and clusters, going down into the wood and disappearing: (Quoted in B. Simms, p.60, 2006) References Barrett, C (2005) Spanning the Years in Grand Designs Magazine, March 2005. Evans, P (2012) The 1960s Home, Shire Publications Ltd, Oxford Harbison, R (2006) Exhibition, Architects Journal 30/11/2006 Simms, B (Ed) (2006) Eric Lyons & Span Strike, J (2012) The Spirit of Span Housing, Strike Print, (Kindle ed) Yi-Fu Tuan, (1977) Space and Place : The Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Spirit-Span-Housing- ebook/dp/B0090L9BJ6/ref=tmm_kin_title_0 http://www.architecture.com/Home.aspx http://www.ribapiX.com/indeX.php?a=wordsearch&s=gallery&w=Templemere &go.X=0&go.y=0&go=Go http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_Developments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gropius http://www.ribabookshops.com/item/eric-lyons-and-span/58648/ http://www.span-kent.co.uk/about_span.html http://www.templemere.co.uk/indeX.html http://www.templemere.co.uk/SPANhistory.html# http://www.thenbs.com/topics/designspecification/videos/eric_lyons_and_spa n.asp http://www.weymede.co.uk/indeX.htm .