Single-storey home in Wimbledon considered an important early example of Hi-Tech
A house which Richard Rogers built for his parents in the late 1960s has been gifted to the nation and put into the care of the National Trust.
The single-storey home at 22 Parkside in Wimbledon was designed by Rogers and his wife Su and built between 1968 and 1970 for the former’s parents, Nino and Dada Rogers. It was grade II*-listed in 2013 as an early example of High-Tech architecture.
Its use of materials and construction approach was considered experimental at the time, including factory-made components, dry building techniques and flexible internal spaces.
Rogers was inspired by lightweight Californian houses created by architects including Charles Eames, Raphael Soriano and Craig Ellwood, adapting these ideas for Britain and taking them further during a critical period in the development of High-Tech.
The site contains separate house and studio buildings, designed as light-filled pavilions arranged around a central courtyard in a narrow wooded plot next to Wimbledon Common.
The house was planned as a practical retirement home for the couple and contained a consulting room for Nino, a doctor, while the studio was used variously to house a garage, guest accommodation and Dada’s pottery studio.
Richard Rogers once described the scheme as the “most successful small project” he had been involved in.
“Like many young people, we wanted to find our own spirit, our own language, our own technologies to solve the problems of the day,” he said.
He added: “It wasn’t going to be a one-off like our previous buildings, this was going to be a standardised system to solve the whole of the British housing problem – it didn’t! But it did certainly lead to most of the work I still do, 50 years later or more.”
His son, Ben Rogers, said the project was “much more than a family home” as he welcomed the decision to place the home in the hands of the National.
“It is one of the most important buildings my father and mother created – a place where many of the ideas that would go on to influence my father’s work and some of the world’s most celebrated architecture were first tested and explored,” he said.
“As a family, we wanted to ensure that this remarkable house would be protected, cared for and shared with future generations, rather than remaining a private asset.
“The National Trust brings the expertise, public purpose and long-term commitment needed to safeguard its future, while opening up its story to students, researchers and visitors,” he added.
The house was put up for sale in 2013 for £3.2 million but eventually gifted to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 2015 as the residence and research base for international students under the Richard Rogers Fellowship.
A restoration by Rogers’ former colleague Philip Gumuchdjian and landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan followed in 2016-17. The house was returned to The Richard Rogers Charitable Settlement when the Harvard Global UK charity moved out in 2021.
The Twentieth Century Society has said it is “thrilled” that the site, which it described as a “modernist masterpiece”, has been handed to the National Trust.
C20 director Catherine Croft said: “Richard and Su Rogers’ 22 Parkside is both a comfortable, light-filled family home, and a highly experimental manifesto house. With structural steel portal frames more commonly found in industrial buildings, windows from a bus, and insultation panels from a refrigerated truck, it’s a prefabricated protype for modern living unlike almost any other home in Britain.
“From this small acid-yellow pavilion off Wimbledon Common, to the heights of the Pompidou Centre and the Lloyd’s Building, the house paved the way for the globe-straddling avant garde architecture that followed.
‘We can think of no better custodians than the National Trust to safeguard its future, and hope they may take on more pioneering 20th century buildings in the years to come!”
Postscript
All images credited to National Trust Images – Megan Taylor
No comments yet