10, Regents Park Road

Block of flats and studios at 10 Regent's Park Road, built 1954–6 by Erno Goldfinger, assisted by Miss B.A. James, for the Regent's Park Housing Society Ltd.

The building employs reinforced concrete construction with three parallel load-bearing walls at the rear and to either side of the stairs, combined with beam and column construction at the front. The columns are exposed and board-marked. In-situ concrete slab floors are externally expressed and wire-brushed to expose aggregate. The deep cornice receives similar treatment. Red brick forms the infill panels.

The building is four storeys with an attic storey. Originally each floor contained two flats; ground-floor and attic spaces are studios set behind garages and a roof terrace respectively. Flats C and D have since been combined. The basement contains a laundry, garden room and storage areas.

The principal elevation presents a symmetrical composition above the ground floor, which has an offset entrance flanked by double garage doors to the left and a further garage door to the right. All garage doors are varnished timber with glazed surrounds using Georgian wired glass. The flats feature continuous metal casement windows. Cantilevered concrete balconies have metal balustrades to the sides and precast panel fronts, creating a carefully composed facade of contrasting materials and finishes. The rear elevation is simpler, though ground-floor studios have similar balconies. Ten letter boxes are arranged in two rows on the facade.

Internally, an entrance hall with quarry tile flooring leads to a central staircase set within the structural well. The staircase is cantilevered without risers, with slender steel balustrades springing from the sides of the treads in a manner comparable to Goldfinger's demolished Player House spiral stair. The first floor contains two two-bedroom flats. The second and third floors each contain one one-bedroom and one three-bedroom flat. Originally all flats featured folding screens between living room, dining area and kitchen, with fitted cupboards and mahogany veneered fitted bedroom cupboards. Bathrooms were tiled, with Goldfinger specifying fittings and colour schemes. Living rooms and studios originally had thermoplastic acotiles tiled floors similar to those in Goldfinger's Willow Road. These features survive in places.

The building occupies a single gap site caused by bomb damage within a long mid-19th-century terrace. Goldfinger linked his cornice through with the adjoining stuccoed houses. As the neighbouring houses were parallel but not level, the new block's face aligns with the house on the right, with balconies projecting to line up with the house on the left.

No. 10 Regent's Park Road represents one of Goldfinger's first post-war works and marks the opening stage of his progression from the restrained modern classicism of his Willow Road terrace (where brick remained the dominant material) toward the tougher, exposed grid system first appearing here and later dominating his major late projects. The bold expression of the balconies with their mannered precast panels foreshadows both Goldfinger's subsequent works and the wider development of tougher architectural idiom in brick and concrete by younger architects from 1958 onwards. The contrast between red brick and concrete against the neighbouring stuccoed terraces is striking. The flats are significant as among Goldfinger's most successful and least altered domestic works, and as a noteworthy example of providing ten flats on a confined gap site.

The building was created through an unusual cooperative venture. In 1952 a group formed themselves into a housing society under the 1936 Housing Act, which allowed Housing Societies and Associations to raise mortgages through local authorities. The flats were collectively owned by the Society, whose elected officers represented the membership in dealings with the architect, builder and St Pancras Council, through whom they obtained a 90% mortgage. Few such societies were subsequently formed due to potential legal difficulties, though they were the most common building method in Scandinavia at the time, and this venture attracted considerable interest. The design and fittings, though simple, were of high quality at a period when building licences remained restricted for private building. The planning is compact and skilful.