Binley House

Binley House is a block of 75 maisonettes, designed between 1952 and 1953 and built between 1955 and 1958 by the London County Council's Architect's Department. Colin Lucas was the architect in charge, with job architects J A Partridge, W G Howell, J A W Killick, S F Amis, J R Galley and R Stout, and W V Zinn and Partners serving as engineers. The building is constructed with an in-situ reinforced concrete frame, featuring board-marked concrete now painted, and prefabricated concrete components incorporating Dorset shingle and Derbyshire spar exposed aggregate. The roof is flat.

The design consists of five tiers, each containing fifteen maisonettes arranged in 12-foot bays, raised upon alternating lines of pilotis at bay intervals along the ground floor. Nine bays south of the lift shaft are left open. The lift shaft and associated services are expressed on the roof as geometric shapes. Double-height lift landings are paved. Each maisonette includes a private balcony facing east, and gallery access from the west. The upper three tiers of flats also feature steel emergency access balconies at bedroom level. Original timber windows with open casements and flush timber doors are present. Internally, each maisonette features a kitchen and living room on the lower level, and two bedrooms with a mechanically ventilated bathroom and toilet on the upper level; internal fittings are not of particular interest.

A ramp of board-marked concrete in front of the lifts incorporates a Corbusian drip-mould. The design of the slab blocks was inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unite d'Habitation in Marseilles, a project Howell and others had observed in 1951, and the proportions are derived from his ‘Modulor’ and the Fibonacci number sequence. The expression of each maisonette as an individual element within the facade represents a new level of rigour and sophistication in slab design. The positioning of the blocks on a hillside, a revision made in September 1953, is considered a skillful response to the setting within Downshire Field, a landscaped 18th-century area. The slope was used to accentuate the pilotis, and the overall relationship of the blocks to each other and the landscape is described as "majestic" in terms of town planning. Binley House forms the centrepiece of the Alton West estate, the LCC's most ambitious post-war development, and was described as "probably the finest low-cost housing development in the world".