19-24, Langham House Close

Block of six flats, numbered 19-24, designed in 1955 and built in 1957-8 by James Stirling and James Gowan for the Manousso Group of Companies. Stirling designed the main block while Gowan designed the two pavilion blocks, accounting for some variation in the flat interiors. Constructed of second-hand stock brick and in-situ reinforced shuttered concrete, with a flat felt roof. The building is two storeys high.

The exterior comprises three asymmetrically placed units, each containing a flat on each floor, arranged around a long central two-storey entrance hall with a suspended access gallery serving the upper flats. A central brick stack serves each unit. Roof and floor levels are expressed externally by concrete bands.

The entrance facade features a narrow central bay containing entrance doors in margin-light surrounds, with the first floor fully glazed with a margin light at skirting level. Projecting bays flank either side, their fronts fully glazed with a strongly horizontal composition of three lights below and four above, set in a wide surround with narrow full-height sidelights in the returns.

Fenestration is identical on both floors except where noted. The windows are thick timber frames with strong horizontal sill bands, complemented by thick timber double doors with glazed panels. The east elevation clearly expresses the separation of each pair of flats, linked only by a central staircase hall which is set back but features a slightly projecting bay of full glazing. The sides have fully glazed returns matching those on the entrance facade. The remainder of this elevation comprises brick crosswalls, each side displaying three small casements, one with a narrow projecting top-light and a concrete infill panel below.

The rear facade is strongly asymmetrical, with the rear pair of flats projecting to the right; both fronts are fully glazed, matching the projections of the entrance facade. A long return contains a two-storey hall window with the concrete floor slab exposed between each section and narrow windows on the return, with the L-shaped pair featuring opening top lights and a concrete band beneath.

The interior materials balance those used outside. The entrance hall is constructed of stock brick with a shuttered concrete ceiling, gallery and stairs, and quarry tile floors. Steel balustrades serve the stairs and gallery. The flats are planned with living, dining and kitchen spaces arranged around a fireplace set in an exposed brick wall, fitted with pre-cast concrete mantelpieces and corbels and a squint to one side of the stack. Kitchen handles and work surfaces are made from iroko, a teak substitute. The remaining walls are plastered, as are the ceilings.

Numbers 19-24 form an integral part of a group with numbers 1-18 and numbers 25-30 Langham House Close, to which the latter it forms a mirrored pair.

The thirty flats were built as a speculative development on 999-year leases in the garden of a late Georgian house. The unusual long, narrow shape of the site largely predetermined the layout and daylighting of the blocks. The developer was committed to the belief that good modern design, well built, would sell better than the conventional mediocrity of traditional speculative building then widely being derided. In September 1955 and March 1956, Stirling had published two articles in the Architectural Review on Le Corbusier's recent work: one on the Maisons Jaoul, the other on the Ronchamp chapel. Concurrently, both Stirling and Gowan had studied the 1920s work in brick of the Dutch de Stijl group. It has been suggested that Langham House Close represents a correction of the forms of the Maisons Jaoul according to their own rationale. Unlike the Maisons Jaoul, the load-bearing brick walls were related to calculated structural minimum and to the warehouse buildings of Stirling's native Liverpool.

This combination of vernacular and early modern movement influences with raw Corbusian concrete—far better finished here than in Le Corbusier's own work—heralded a new style of architecture in Britain. With its acknowledgement to the massiveness of many nineteenth-century industrial revolution buildings, it represented a truly British contribution to the international modernist canon of the late 1950s and provided an appropriate aesthetic to the term 'New Brutalism', hitherto claimed by the Smithsons as an ethic or way of seeing rather than a style of building. Stirling and Gowan had little regard for such a tag and were in no way followers of the Smithsons; instead they offered an alternative course. The conscious over-design of the Langham House Close flats represented a fully developed reaction against the curtain-walled public housing of the period. This was also Stirling and Gowan's first major work in partnership together.

Langham House Close is an early and highly influential example of New Brutalist architecture employed to great effect in a speculative development. The scheme drew aspects from Le Corbusier's work at Maisons Jaoul, particularly the combination of brick and exposed shuttered concrete, representing what was considered an honest use of materials. The development displayed a quality of design and attention to detail not seen in traditional speculative building or public housing of the period, something still evident today in the essentially complete interiors and exteriors of the three blocks.