St Bernards III
Park Hill, London CR0
Architect: Atelier 5
Register for similar homes“Drawing considerable inspiration from the iconic Halen development, St Bernards remains Atelier 5’s only project in the United Kingdom”
This brilliant three-bedroom house is well-positioned within St Bernards in Park Hill, Croydon. Rarely available, the houses on this estate were described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘a group with few equals in Britain’. Set within three acres of communal landscaped gardens, the house is a bright, light and serene haven.
The Building
Constructed between 1969-70, the estate is the only project by the renowned Swiss architects Atelier 5 in the United Kingdom and was inspired by the group’s iconic Halen development near Bern, Switzerland. An upside-down house in plan, the three main bedrooms are found on the lower-ground floor, with the principal living space above. The rooms are serene, flanked by private courtyards to both the front and rear.
Informed by ideas of community, privacy and the garden city sensibilities of a healthy lifestyle, as well as the modernist intentions of truth of materiality, light and space, the 21 houses are set in three acres of communal landscaped gardens. They were built on a south-facing slope shaded by mature trees; the whole estate is now designated a conservation area. For more information, please see the History section.
The Tour
The stepped rows of houses allow for communal walkways lined with uniformly discreet entrances. From here, a wooden front door leads to the first of two courtyards, and a pergola cleverly conceals the gardens from their neighbours.
Beyond this, a glass door opens onto a hall. Internally, the houses are narrow in profile, emphasising the garden views at either end. This house retains most of its original form and is very well-preserved throughout.
The dining room at the front leads to a kitchen with red and white cabinetry lit from above by skylights. Beyond is the large living room, with a timber balcony and floor-to-ceiling windows. A small bedroom lies opposite and overlooks the front courtyard. This house has long views over the shared lawns, uninterrupted by other houses.
The main bedrooms are downstairs, with sliding doors that open onto the second, wonderfully private courtyard. Like their predecessors in Halen, the houses in St Bernards have a large ‘rumpus room’ behind the bedrooms. Intended for noisy activities like children’s games, the current owner has utilised this as a large home office.
Outdoor Space
St Bernards has great communal facilities and grounds, in line with Atelier 5’s intentions for it as a cohesive community, and the residents remain actively involved in running the estate. A large underground carpark, visionary for its time, has a space for each household and visitor’s parking.
The Area
St Bernards is close to Park Hill Park, which has a lovely playground, tennis courts and formal gardens. A little further afield is the 114 acre Lloyd Park with sports pitches.
Surrey street market, a 15-minute walk away, is one of the oldest known street markets in London. It has recently undergone a million-pound refurbishment and is open weekly. The opening of Boxpark Croydon in 2016 spurred a flurry of new restaurant openings, and the area is still undergoing significant regeneration. Fairfield Halls, built in 1962 to bring theatre and music to Croydon, has also recently undergone a £30m restoration.
St Bernards is a 12-minute walk from East Croydon station, with has fast connections to Farringdon (and will connect with Crossrail on its completion), Victoria and London Bridge, taking between 15 and 20 minutes, and also to the south coast. Croydon is part of London’s tram network, connecting it to Wimbledon and Beckenham. The house is also only a 40-minute drive from Gatwick Airport.
Service Charge: approx £1,080 per annum
Council Tax Band: F
Please note that all areas, measurements and distances given in these particulars are approximate and rounded. The text, photographs and floor plans are for general guidance only. The Modern House has not tested any services, appliances or specific fittings — prospective purchasers are advised to inspect the property themselves. All fixtures, fittings and furniture not specifically itemised within these particulars are deemed removable by the vendor.
History
“When the slabs went down on the first 21 houses Wates held a celebratory party. It was 1968, and it was a funny, crazy event. We had Swiss music, there were girls with Swiss flag miniskirts and a lot of Swiss cheese and cheddar, there was beer and Guinness…” Hans Hostettler, founding member of Atelier 5.
Atelier 5 was founded in 1955 by Erwin Fritz, Samuel Gerber, Rolf Hesterberg, Hans Hostettler and Alfredo Pini (and later Niklaus Morgenthaler). Four of the five founding members worked together in the studio of Hans Brechbühler, who had in turn studied under Le Corbusier in the 1930s. Without enough work in the older architect’s office, the group began looking for opportunities for their own designs, along with Samuel Gerber, who had recently returned from studying the landscape designer Burle Marx in Brazil.
Initially, they intended to build houses for themselves and their families, but after approaching the owner of a large site in the rolling countryside overlooking the Aare River just outside Bern in Switzerland, their ideas quickly turned to a larger residential project. The resulting Halen Estate, built in 1961, has become the canonical prototype for low-rise, high-density housing in the last half of the 20th Century. The houses at St Bernards in Croydon are very much influenced by this earlier design.
Atelier 5’s project at Halen is known as a Siedlung, or housing development, which speaks to Swiss modern Movement ideals and more traditional ideas of villages and towns. Seventy-eight houses were finished, including those for the architects themselves (some of which still live there). The design follows Le Corbusier’s Modular theory, which the members tested on their own families. They devised are two simple types of layout, which are set across three stories on a narrow four or five-metre profile. With car-free walkways, the site is an urban oasis in the countryside. Two annexes, Thalmatt I and Thalmatt II, were later added.
The houses follow many of the same principles as those at Halen, reproduced, however, in London Stock brick rather than concrete. Notably, both groups of houses are private at a communal and individual level. The stepped levels are surrounded by mature trees that are older than the buildings, with views outwards rather than over the neighbours.
Hans Hostettler explains how the group’s only design in the United Kingdom, St Bernards, came about: “The scheme in Croydon was the result of a competition. Wates, who were one of the biggest housing developers in the UK, invited us to enter. The brief was for 280 houses in a plot of land that had 300 mature trees. They stipulated that we had to retain 250 of them. So we designed the houses, with little spaces around them with the trees and so on. We won the completion and got invited to London to present our drawings. Our meeting was at 9 am, and we presented our plans. We had all different types of houses —small ones, large ones, larger ones still, all kinds. We had to do all our drawings in UK measurements, in feet and inches! We had to learn quickly!’’
The estate was built and commissioned by The Wates Company in 1969-70 as part of a wider development scheme in the Park Hill area. As an established family builder, they completed several post-war housing developments in London and the south of England at the time, including the large Dulwich Estate. Unfortunately, only the first phase of the Atelier 5 estate at Park Hill was built, leaving a group of only twenty-one houses. The surrounding houses of the same era follow more traditional building styles, as most were designed by Wates’ less experimental in-house team.
Atelier 5 continue as a renowned architectural practice that, although no longer run by its founders, is closely connected to its roots. Their enduring ethos of the importance of the collective over the individual is evident in their buildings, including St Bernards.
