Vista Point, Including Garages And Attached Walls

Vista Point is a private house, garages, and garden walls built in 1969-70 by the architect Patrick Gwynne for Kenneth Monk, his Quantity Surveyor. It stands on a coastal site in East Preston.

The house is constructed with cavity brickwork walls rendered externally in sparkling 'Mineralite', with corrugated white plastic fascia and garden screen. The sloping roof is covered with dark green 'Wessex' tiles, and the balcony floor has been retiled. The garages, plinth, and garden walls are built in dark blue/grey brick with a flat garage roof. Windows are plastic-coated steel with wooden sills, subsequently double-glazed within the original frames.

The building is a two-storey detached house approached from the north. It has an 'hourglass' plan, broader at its south end, with a linked three-car garage fanning to the west. The house is entered at its northwest corner through a small lobby that leads to a central hall containing a spiral staircase enclosed in a circular well, with a back door on the west side. The rooms are arranged around the stair: two bedrooms at the front and three at the back, with three bathrooms occupying the 'waisted' middle section. The main living accommodation is on the first floor, with a large living room on the south side, dining room, and balcony with steps down to the garden. The kitchen is located on the north side.

The north façade facing the street is reticent, with steps up to a recessed front door beneath an undulating roof that slopes towards the front, interrupted by a kitchen dormer with projecting hood. Ground floor windows are screened by a fence. To the right, the garages curve round beneath a plastic fascia; originally a double carport and single garage, now with additional doors added to the carport. The east and west façades follow the line of the undulating roof with minimal fenestration. The house is substantially fenestrated at first floor level to the south, addressing the garden, including glazed doors to the balcony. A nautical theme is expressed through a generous first floor covered balcony with recessed eating area and plastic-coated metal balustrade. A staircase descends to the garden. The curved rear wall of the garages expresses the bays for three cars, with a plastic garden screen beyond. A terrace in front of the house has steps down to the garden.

Inside, walls are white-painted render, timber, or lined with Gwynne's favourite plastic grass paper. Floors are largely carpeted. Decorative features and fitted furniture are concentrated on the first floor. Frosted glass doors lead from the landing. The walls dividing the living and dining rooms from the kitchen are wood-lined with fitted cupboards, and a hatch connects the dining room and kitchen. The central spiral staircase is particularly fine, lined with ribbed timber and featuring an ash handrail. The ground floor rooms are more simply finished, but the bathrooms retain original fittings, and bedrooms have fitted bed-heads, dressing tables, and cupboards.

Patrick Gwynne (1913-2003) produced a series of important and highly original houses during the post-war period, developing themes first explored in The Homewood, built in 1937-9 and now owned by the National Trust. His playful style, with its fondness for unusual materials and increasing interest in curves, proved well suited to holiday home design, but this is his only example. Vista Point is a very successful small house with interior fittings of excellent quality. It exemplifies Gwynne's favourite centralised plan, given added interest by placing the principal rooms on the first floor piano nobile and separating the ground floor into distinctive areas for owners and guests. It is one of Gwynne's least altered surviving works and remains important as an example of his later, more anthropomorphic style.