St Bernards II
Park Hill, London CR0

SOLD

Architect: Atelier 5

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"The combination of indoor and outdoor living space, completely private, with its distant views to the south is key to the whole concept." Wates sales brochure (1969)

This three-bedroom house is well-positioned on the edge of St Bernards in Park Hill, Croydon. Rarely available, the houses were described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘a group with few equals in Britain’.

Built in 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. The upside-down plan, flanked by a private courtyard on either side, was informed by ideas of community and privacy, garden city notions of a healthy lifestyle, and Modernist intentions of truth of materiality, light and space. The 21 houses are set in 3 acres of communal landscaped gardens and were built on a south-facing slope shaded by mature trees. The whole estate is now designated a conservation area.

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, with a pergola that cleverly conceals the garden from its neighbours. Beyond this, large glass sliding doors open onto the dining room. Internally, the houses have a narrow profile that is angled towards garden views at each end. This house retains most of its original form, and is well-preserved throughout.

The dining room leads to a kitchen lit from above with skylights. A small bedroom that also looks to the courtyard is currently used as a study. Beyond this is the large living room, with a timber balcony and floor-to-ceiling windows. This house has long views over the shared lawns, uninterrupted by other houses.

The bedrooms are downstairs, with sliding doors that open onto the second and 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 re-imagined this as a third bedroom, with a lightwell to the courtyard above.

St Bernards has great communal facilities and grounds, in line with Atelier 5’s intentions for it as a cohesive community. The residents remain actively involved in running the estate. There is a large underground car park which was visionary for its time – within which each house has a space – as well as visitor’s parking.

Park Hill Park has a lovely playground, tennis courts and formal gardens. A little further afield is the 114 acre Lloyd Park, which has sports pitches. Surrey street market – one of the oldest known street markets in London – 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 has 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 which has fast connections to Farringdon (which 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

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 on 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 as well more traditional ideas of villages and towns. In total 78 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 of those at Halen, reproduced however in London Stock brick rather than concrete. Importantly, 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 9am, and we presented our plans. We had all different types of houses —small ones, large one, 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 scheme of development 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 is 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.

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