House, Staff Flat And Garage

Private house with staff flat and garage, built 1968-9 by Philip Pank (in partnership with Robert Howard) for Harvey Ünna, the literary agent.

The building is a detached two-storey house of rectangular plan, with a separate one-storey staff flat and double garage adjoining at the rear. It is constructed with load-bearing hand-made grey-brown Flintshire brick walls and a reinforced concrete slab floor for the upper storey. Windows and external doors are of utile (hardwood). The house has lead fascias, with joinery of purpose-made British Columbian pine throughout. The upper terrace and entrance stairs are also of brick. The roof is flat with a concrete chimney.

The house is positioned at the back of the garden, set on sloping ground that falls from back to front. The first floor is stepped back above the ground floor, which is partly built into the bank. The land slopes beneath the house so that it addresses the garden, the street and Hampstead Heath beyond.

Main access is via a protruding entrance pod at the rear of the house at first floor level, containing the entrance hall and cloakroom, with a separate door leading directly to the kitchen. This level is reached by an inclining drive along the west edge of the site and an external stair between house and garage. The living accommodation is at first floor level, with interconnecting rooms split into a dining room and kitchen to the west and a large living room to the east, with the internal stair between them. Both the dining room and living room face south on to the garden with access to a wide terrace running the full length of the house. Below, a music room and two bedrooms are placed along the south side with direct access to the garden. A boiler room, two bathrooms and sauna sit behind, with a large service corridor running along the rear. The separate staff flat above the garage is accessed by an external stair on its west side, comprising kitchen and living room at the front, bathroom, store and bedroom at the back, with a lean-to extension on the east side.

The principal south-facing garden façade has the upper storey set back, featuring a row of full-height vertical windows with small high-level windows above, divided by a cantilevered wood-lined canopy running the length of this façade and partially covering the upper terrace. Box beams from the living room protrude through the outside wall between the high-level windows, from which the canopy appears suspended. The brick ground floor is punctuated by four sets of full-height windows opening on to a second paved terrace. The rear and side façades are blank brick walls, topped with a strip of high-level windows (rear) or timber boarding (sides) and lead flashing. The rear façade is divided by the entrance pod. The east wall has a protruding brick box holding the fireplace, with tubular chimney above. The west wall is punctuated by a few window openings and follows the contours of the stepped-back front façade. The flat and garage are of simpler design, with a large timber double garage door at ground-floor level, narrow band of windows at first floor and timber boarding below roof level on the south façade. Utile windows have been renewed in the same form as the originals.

The house interiors are of high quality in materials and finish. Maple floors run throughout. The first-floor rooms have high pine-boarded ceilings resting on large ply-clad box beams. End walls are fair-faced brick, with timber from the level of the box beams upwards. All rooms have high-level windows between box beams to the north and south, and the dining and living rooms have a wall of full-height windows with sliding components. The living room has fitted timber shelving on the rear wall and a recessed fireplace in the east wall with a raised stone hearth. There is a custom-built wooden fitted kitchen with dark grey tiles. A wall of cupboards on the kitchen's south side functions as a division between it and the dining room, with a hatch. On the ground floor, walls are rendered with fitted cupboards in white painted timber. Bathrooms have white fittings and white tiles.

The house was built on part of the garden of an older house, with the grounds re-landscaped by John Brookes, a key designer of gardens for modern houses in this period.

The building is significant as a sumptuous private house in the modern movement, powerfully composed and richly appointed. Monumentality was a distinctive feature of Pank's work, even though he never worked on a large scale; this is one of his larger houses and one where his idiom is most fully realised. His work developed from a love of natural materials and finishes, owing something to Eastern traditions, to Frank Lloyd Wright and perhaps to Auguste Perret. Philip Pank (1934-1991) died relatively young, and this is one of his most important buildings.