Warren House

Warren House, No 10 Warren Lane, Dartington

A house designed in 1935 by the American architects W E Lescaze of Howe and Lescaze, assisted by R Hening, for Kurt Jooss, the dancer and creator of the Ballets Jooss. The building exemplifies the International Modern Style.

The house has painted rendered brick cavity walls with concrete coping to the parapets concealing a flat roof, which is partly tiled to form a roof terrace. The plan is L-shaped, built on a sloping site that required excavation, with the higher ground level at the back. A garage occupies the lower ground level of the front wing. Although the stair tower rises above the main roof, the house is principally two storeys.

The entrance is accessed by a flight of steps up to an entrance porch in the angle of the L, leading to a central hall that distributes access to all ground floor rooms. The ground floor comprises: to the left, living and dining rooms separated by a sliding partition, with the dining room having a verandah on the left side of the house; a kitchen in the front left-hand wing; a back stair next to the kitchen; a curved partition wall separating the hall from a drawing room at the back; and to the right at the back, Kurt Jooss's dance studio with a study library off. The main staircase to the first floor is at the front right. The first floor contains two principal bedrooms, a dressing room, bathrooms, visitors' bedrooms or nurseries, and rooms for nurse and maid. The front left-hand bedroom has a balcony on the flat roof of the kitchen wing, and the rear right-hand bedroom has a smaller balcony over the studio; both balconies were intended for outside sleeping. The main stairs rise through a tower to give access to the flat roof.

The exterior presents asymmetrical elevations comprising three interlocking cubes on two levels with three roof heights. The entrance front (east) shows the tallest block set back to the right, its back wall pierced by rectangular window openings and rising to a flat-roofed stair tower. The main entrance is set in the angle with the left-hand block, accessed by steps beneath a flat concrete canopy supported on a steel post. The left-hand block is lower and has a horizontal window band on the first floor with french doors giving access to the roof terrace over the projecting kitchen block, which has a window band on its right-hand corner. The garage at lower ground level has a vertical window to the left, now partly concealed by a later extension. A later canopy has been added over the garage doors. The south return has asymmetrically disposed windows; the ground floor right of the higher block is recessed, and the corner above is supported on a slender steel post to form a verandah for the dining room, which has a large fully glazed window area. The north elevation has a narrow horizontal window band (now divided into three windows) lighting the dance studio, and a slightly deeper window band on the first floor. The rear (west) elevation shows the dance studio projecting on the ground floor to the left, above which is a roof terrace with access from a doorway in a band of windows on the first floor which continues to the right; two windows below to the right. The roof terraces have a steel tube and wire net balustrade. The stair tower has a flat roof cantilevered on the inner side to form a canopy. A rendered chimney rises from the flat roof of the lower block to the south. All windows are steel frame casements and doors are flush plywood.

The interior features a dog-leg staircase with a curved solid balustrade faced in Columbian pine plywood with a moulded black ebonised handrail. A sliding partition separates the drawing room and dining room. The drawing room has a small fireplace with a polished marble surround. The dining room has a fitted cupboard forming a screen faced in walnut plywood, with drawers and serving hatches with wooden roller shutters. The first floor has a fitted wardrobe in one room. Other rooms have small simple fireplaces with tiled or slate surrounds. All doors throughout are flush plywood. Metal skirtings are coved at the junction with the floors, which are hardwood boarded in the hall and around other rooms; the dance studio has a jarrah wood floor. The main stairs rise above the roof into a tower which contains the water tank and gives access to the flat roof terrace.

Small extensions have been added to the left-hand front wing.

Dartington Hall became the headquarters of the Ballets Jooss, and this house was built for its founder, the dancer Kurt Jooss.