Sivill House

Sivill House

Twenty-storey residential point block designed by Skinner, Bailey and Lubetkin, built 1964-1966.

The building is constructed of reinforced concrete clad in Primrose Himley golden russet bricks and concrete. The windows are aluminium-framed, with brown frames for windows and bright yellow frames for the glazed screens providing access to balconies. These frames were replaced in the 1980s following a scheme that maintained almost the same glazing pattern as the original, with transoms aligning with balcony rails, though the replacement frames are heavier than their predecessors.

The tower is sunk into the natural platform of the site, creating a semi-basement and a slightly elevated ground floor accessed from the south. The flats are arranged in two parallel stacks linked by a circular stair tower. The stacks are cranked along their centre line, forming shallow arrow-head shapes pointing south. The southern stack is wider and contains two two-bedroom flats with south-facing balconies and the lift shaft at each floor. The northern stack contains two one-bedroom flats at each floor, with balconies facing east and west.

The basement and ground floor are set back from the face of the building, creating an undercroft or loggia that shelters the elevated main entrance, reached by a sculptural stair and ramp with steel and concrete balustrades. The undercroft is faced in engineering brick and tiles, the latter not part of the original scheme. The outer edge of the undercroft is carried on piloti that root the building's footprint to the ground.

The south elevation of the tower displays a complex pattern of brick and concrete cladding framed at the outer edges by inset balconies with concrete and glass balustrades. Vertical bands of brick run down the building, interrupted by rows of wide, square concrete Cs facing forwards or backwards and framing three sides of each window. A regular row of narrow windows set in brick occurs every fifth floor. This arrangement interlocks storeys above and below, breaking the typical horizontal monotony of stacked floors and creating a sense of movement across the façade. The elevation is meticulously detailed, with the alignment of contrasting materials creating an almost woven texture.

The other elevations are more regularly ordered, brick-faced and broken vertically by strips of windows or inset balconies and horizontally by concrete storey bands, with those every fifth floor more heavily expressed. The east and west elevations are notable for the formal interest of the circular stair tower, deeply set between the two cranked stacks. The stair tower is lit by windows at every level, but every fifth floor is fully glazed.

The building is topped by a concrete crown—a band of flat concrete projecting out over the face of the building, held by cranked concrete arms mounted on the roof and punctuating the top of the building like a cornice.

The key interior feature is the stair, which winds sinuously up from the entrance lobby with a solid cast balustrade to the outer string and a steel balustrade on the inner string. A single column clad in yellow mosaic tiles stands at the base of the stair; in the floors above the load is carried by a solid stairwell wall enclosing the outer string. The dark grey terrazzo of the entrance lobby floor is original, while the tile cladding of the walls is not. Some original flush panel front doors and glazed steel stair lobby doors survive throughout the building. The flats are conventionally planned on a single level, with separate kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedrooms.