Gilbert House

Gilbert House

A block of 80 flats designed by Powell and Moya, architects, following a competition won in 1946. Built between 1951 and 1954 to a revised design for Westminster City Council under Parker Morris, town clerk. The building forms part of Phase II of the Churchill Gardens development, constructed on bombed land at the opposite end of the estate from Phase I.

The structure is ten storeys over a basement, with a painted concrete frame, buff and blue brick infill, rendered side elevations, and a flat roof. Ground to eighth floor contain two-bedroom flats, each with a projecting cantilevered concrete balcony—the central ones paired—overlooking the rear garden. The ninth floor accommodates one- and two-bedroom flats set behind a continuous access gallery with continuous balconies at the rear. Eight flats per floor are arranged in fours off two short galleries facing Lupus Street, each served by one stair with lifts and one escape stair with refuse shute.

The gallery backs are lined with blue bricks and have smaller windows serving kitchens and bathrooms, with original half-glazed doors. The flush buff brick faces feature bands of timber windows with galvanised steel opening lights creating an asymmetrical pattern of mullions, with some piecemeal renewal. Galleries and balconies have steel balustrades infilled with wired glass, continued as a tripartite pattern in panels forming added glazing in stairwells. Staircases have straight steel balustrades. Refuse shutes are painted olive green, a unique surviving example of the estate's original colour scheme. Each stairwell has a cantilevered concrete porch hood. The rooftop liftcage and water tanks are set in rendered drums, a distinctive feature of the estate.

The design was revised following the 1951 census and government funding cuts, which prompted Westminster City Council to request more smaller flats. Powell and Moya reintroduced access galleries on a careful plan ensuring they only passed kitchen and bathroom windows. Gilbert House and its companion, Sullivan House, are among the most successful of Powell and Moya's later housing at Churchill Gardens. The horizontal grid of galleries and balconies contrasts carefully with the vertical grid of window mullions, whilst the bands of glazing give a translucent quality to the blocks. The projecting rear balconies are among the most generous in the later phases. These are the only blocks not on a staggered plan, and the near-continuous wall of banded brick and glass along Lupus Street forms a powerful advertisement for the estate. The design was much repeated by Powell and Moya at Churchill Gardens and Gospel Oak, but not again on so generous a scale nor with so successful a cumulative effect. Interiors are not of special interest. Original nameplates survive.