CHARLES HOLDEN
CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Contents
07
CHARLES HOLDEN: an introduction
09
Underground Journeys Charles Holden’s designs for London Transport The V&A + RIBA Architecture Partnership
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A Quaker and the Underground David Burnell
31
An architecture free from fads and aesthetic conceits Jonathan Glancey
CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
CHARLES HOLDE 12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960 06
EN
U nderground J ourneys: Charles Holden’ s
designs for
L ondon T ransport
London’s headquar ters at 55 Broadway and for the University of London’s Senate House. He also created many war cemeteries in Belgium and nor thern France for the Imperial War Graves Commission. After working and training in Bolton and Manchester, Holden moved to London. His early buildings were influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, but for most of his career he championed an unadorned style based on simplified forms and massing that was free of what he considered to be unnecessary decorative detailing. Holden believed strongly that architectural designs should be dictated by buildings’ intended functions. After the First World War he increasingly simplified his style and his designs became pared-down and modernist, influenced by European architecture. He was a member of the Design and Industries Association and the Art Workers’ Guild. He produced complete designs for his buildings, including interior design and architectural fittings.
Charles Henry Holden, Litt.D, FRIBA, MRTPI, RDI, was a Bolton-born English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s, for Bristol Central Library, the Underground Electric Railways Company of
Although not without its critics, his architecture is widely appreciated. He was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA’s) Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1936 and was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 1943. His station designs for London Underground became the corporation’s standard design influencing designs by all architects working for the organisation in the 1930s. Many of his buildings have been granted listed building status, protecting them from unapproved alteration. He twice declined the offer of a knighthood.
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Underground Journeys Charles Holden’s designs for London Transpor t The V&A + RIBA Architecture Partnership 08
U nderground J ourneys: Charles Holden’ s
Enfield West station (later renamed Oakwood) Topical Press, 1933 London Transport Museum, London
designs for
L ondon T ransport
During the 1920s and 30s, London Underground symbolised modern Britain and Charles Holden’s designs defined modern British architecture from this time. Working in collaboration with London Underground Managing Director Frank Pick, Holden was responsible for some of the finest public architecture in early twentieth-century London. Pick wanted new structures which would reflect the efficient technological modernity of his growing transport system. Holden 09
CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Fitness for Purpose Holden was an experienced architect when he began his Underground work for Pick, though he had never designed for transport. Having worked with Arts and Crafts architect C.R. Ashbee, he joined the practice of H. Percy Adams, establishing his reputation with buildings such as the Bristol Central Library and the British Medical Association in London.
Design for Underground Railway Pavilion, British Empire Exhibition,Wembley Adams Holden & Pearson,1918 RIBA Collections, London
held similar views on architecture and design which had developed through a rather contradictory mix of treasuring the traditional, English Arts & Crafts ideals and a desire to return to elemental simple forms and exploring new technology that has been described as ‘medieval modernism’. Pick was in many ways his ideal client, and their creative partnership produced Holden’s best architectural work. As consulting architect to the Underground and later London Transport, Holden designed more than 50 Tube stations built over a 25 year period, starting from 1924. At the time, it was the largest building programme in the capital shaped by a single architect since Christopher Wren rebuilt the City churches destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
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Pick and Holden first met in 1915 as founder members of the Design and Industries Association (DIA), a group that brought together artists, architects, manufacturers and retailers intent on improving standards of design in British commerce. In all their work for the Underground they both followed the DIA’s rigorous ‘Fitness for Purpose’ rule. Pick later commissioned Holden to redesign the facades of several underground stations and to design a pavilion to represent the Underground Group at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.
Moving Underground Holden’s first Tube station series was for the southern extension of the Northern line from Clapham Common to Morden, opened in 1926. Initially, Stanley Heaps, head of the Underground’s Architects Office, had created new designs for the stations, but following concerns raised by Pick, Holden took over the project. He developed a standard ‘folding screen’ entrance design that could be adapted to each site, whether it was freestanding or inserted into an existing building.The facades were in white Portland stone with large glazed areas and prominent Under-
U nderground J ourneys: Charles Holden’ s
designs for
L ondon T ransport
Sketch of the perspective view of the entrance front, 55 Broadway, Westminster Charles Holden, 1920 RIBA Collections, London
ground roundels. Floodlighting and bright internal illumination made each station stand out like a beacon on a dark street. Around the same time, both Bond Street and St Paul’s stations were rebuilt to handle the increase in passenger traffic. Holden used the same design elements he had developed for the Morden extension.
The Heart of London Piccadilly Circus, one of the busiest Tube stations in central London, was completely reconstructed in 1925–28. Built to replace the inadequate surface level booking hall and lifts, the new circular hall could accommodate 50 million passengers a year. Holden transformed this bleak cavern into a welcoming underground environment by creating what he called an ‘ambulato11
CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Sketch of the exterior view (left) and entrance lobby (right), 55 Broadway, Westminster Charles Holden, 1920 RIBA Collections, London
Sketch of the east elevation, 55 Broadway, Westminster Charles Holden, 1927 RIBA Collections, London
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U nderground J ourneys: Charles Holden’ s
designs for
L ondon T ransport
ry’. His design was more like a high-class shopping arcade than a station, with window showcases and marble wall panelling. Piccadilly became the jewel in the Underground’s crown, much admired by visitors to London. Holden was already working on an even bigger scheme for a new Underground headquarters. Once completed 55 Broadway was the largest and tallest office block in London, built on an awkward triangular site over St James’s Park station. Holden decided on a cruciform plan which gave street level access to the offices and station from both sides. The mass of the building was stepped up to a central tower, giving maximum daylight to all floors. This was London’s first taste of American style office architecture, soon known as ‘The Cathedral of Modernity’.
Changing the face of London Underground In the early 1930s, Holden and Pick refined the elements of what soon became an instantly recognisable London Transport corporate design style. This was applied to new structures from bus shelters to Tube stations right across the city. It changed the face of London. Before starting on this ‘adventure’, as Holden called it, he and Pick went on an architectural study tour of northern Europe in 1930. They particularly admired the work of Willem Dudok (1884–1974) in Holland and Erik Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940) in Stockholm. These European influences became the framework of ideals, reflected in Holden’s next station
series for the Piccadilly line extensions, built from 1931–3. The prototype for what Holden modestly called his ‘brick boxes with concrete lids’ was Sudbury Town. This established a ‘kit of parts’ for new stations. Extended horizontal and vertical planes were used to create simple but bold forms and spaces.
Poster for the Opening of the Piccadilly line extension Cecil Walter Bacon, 1932 London Transport Museum, London
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Design for proposed shelters for tramway and bus passengers, London Transport Adams Holden & Pearson,1929 RIBA Collections, London
Traditional English brickwork was combined with smooth concrete, metal window frames and glazed tiling. Sometimes a tower was added or the box became a drum, as at Arnos Grove. Nearly all of these stations, generally considered Holden’s nest, are now listed buildings.
Integrated Design Holden’s holistic approach to the design of the Underground stations was encouraged by Pick’s enlightened vision of a better urban environment. Everything was carefully integrated, and Holden was given responsibility for the design of all fixtures and decoration above 14
and below ground. This included lighting, tiling, clocks, litter bins, ticket machines and booths. He also incorporated the Underground’s distinctive roundel, lettering and signage developed by Edward Johnston. Holden’s design work was not limited just to the Underground. He also developed a series of prototypes for passenger bus and coach shelters and bus stop posts. He even attempted to re-design the LT-type bus. Although these ventures into product design are less well-known and not as successful as his station designs, they clearly illustrate the extent to which Holden and Pick worked to shape every physical aspect of the London Transport system.
U nderground J ourneys: Charles Holden’ s
designs for
L ondon T ransport
Sudbury Town station Leo Herbert Felton, 1926 RIBA Collections, London
Design for Redbridge station Adams Holden & Pearson, 1931 RIBA Collections, London
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Design for Rayners Lane station Adams Holden & Pearson, 1936 RIBA Collections, London
‘Holdenesque’ In 1933, the Underground Group became part of a new public corporation, London Transport (LT), with Pick as Chief Executive. A major five-year New Works Programme was announced which included extensions and improvements to the Bakerloo, Northern and Central lines. Adams, Holden & Pearson were appointed consulting architects to the Board, and were soon working with LT’s own architects and engineers on new stations such as Redbridge and Gants Hill. Holden became less personally involved in the Underground work. In 1931, he had been awarded the RIBA London Architecture Medal for 55 Broadway. Due to the success of the Underground headquarters, Holden was chosen to design
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the new University of London complex in Bloomsbury. The prestigious Senate House project now took up much of Holden’s time, and some of the London Transport work was sub-contracted or carried out in partnership with other architectural practices. Pick was unhappy about this, as he felt that the LT work was becoming ‘Holdenesque’, following the general style Holden had set for the Underground but lacking his careful attention to detail.
Holden’s Legacy There is no doubt that the designs carried out by Holden for the Underground have had an impact on subsequent railway architecture. Holden’s ‘brick box with a lid’ format was emulated by other architects
U nderground J ourneys: Charles Holden’ s
designing for London Transport during the late 1930s and 1940s, and his functional style continues to be an influence with contemporary station designs such as Canada Water and West Ham on the Jubilee line extension. Recognised for his inspirational architecture, Holden was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1936. The early designs on the Piccadilly line extensions, along with 55 Broadway, are now regarded as modernist icons and have been recognised through their listed status awarded by English Heritage. The legacy of the Holden and Pick partnership was (is?) considerable. Holden understood Pick’s aspiration to produce work of the highest quality, and Pick’s patronage enabled Holden to achieve it. But above all they shared a moral philosophy
designs for
L ondon T ransport
Redhill station, Surrey about how a building should work both Troughton McAslan, aesthetically and practically. Together they 1991 developed a modern yet classic style of RIBA Collections, architecture which de ned not only the London image of London Transport but that of the capital itself.
This article was published in the Underground Journeys: Charles Holden’s designs for London Transport exhibtion guide in October 2010. 17
CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Osterley
Osterley station Adams Holden & Pearson and Stanley Arthur Heaps, 1934, RIBA Collections, London
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Osterley station on the Piccadilly line was re-designed by Charles Holden and Underground architect Stanley Heaps. Opened in 1934, it replaced the original 1883 Osterley and Spring Grove station which needed modernising. Located on the busy Great West Road, the station is dominated by its tall ventilation tower and the finial mounted on top. Illuminated at night, the finial acts as a beacon for passing traffic.
A Q uaker
and the
Underground
Finchley Central Between 1937 and 1947, plans were made to rebuild the Victorian station previously known as Finchley (Church End). Charles Holden collaborated on the new designs with Reginald Uren whilst they designed Rayners Lane. Located below ground and beneath a bridge carrying Regents Park Road and Ballards Lane, various alternative designs were explored for the station buildings, including this plan that features a colonnade and short tower repeated on either side of the road. Due to lack of funds following the end of the Second World War, none of the new designs were ever executed, and the original Victorian station remains in use today.
Unexecuted design for Finchley Central station Adams Holden & Pearson and Reginald Harold Uren, 1932 RIBA Collections, London
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Uxbridge
The platform of Uxbridge station Salisbury Photo Press, 1940 RIBA Collections, London
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The development of rural Uxbridge into a growing suburb spurred a need to expand the existing underground station, which had opened in 1904 to serve the Metropolitan Railway. The concept for the new station originally was devised by architects Leonard Bucknell and Ruth Ellis, but due to rising costs, the project was scaled back. Taken on by Charles Holden, the proven model of the reinforced concrete shed used at Cockfosters was adapted for Uxbridge but made proportionately higher to accommodate the taller Metropolitan line trains. Opening in 1938, the new terminus signalled the end of the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines, as well as a grand civic arrival into the town.
A Q uaker
and the
Underground
Warren Street Originally opened in 1907 as Euston Road station serving the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, Warren Street was modernised during the 1930s with a new ticket hall, entrance and escalators. Initial designs were carried out by Charles Holden and then developed by the Underground architect Stanley Heaps. Located on a narrow corner site, the new facade is comprised of a half drum of Portland stone. A brick storey was added when an of office building replaced the original station.
Design for Warren Street station Adams Holden & Pearson, 1927 RIBA Collections, London
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
A Quaker and the Underground David Burnell
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A Q uaker
Design for Arnos Grove station on the Southgate extension to the Piccadilly line Adams Holden & Pearson, 1926 RIBA Collections, London
and the
Underground
Charles Holden, (1875–1960), designed many of the Underground stations built in the inter-war period and immediately afterwards and inspired or supervised the design of others. The recent exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum sketching Holden’s work for the Underground Electric Railways of London Company and its successor, the London Transport Passenger Transport Board, is a mark of the growing stature and appreciation of this architect whose work, until recently, only 23
CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Southgate station and shopping centre Adams Holden & Pearson, 1933 RIBA Collections, London
Southgate station at night Topical Press, 1933 London Transport Museum, London (top right)
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received a low profile in architectural history. The publication in 2007 of a definitive biography by Eitan Karol, Charles Holden has helped to put Holden firmly on the architectural map and more recently the Guardian’s architectural writer Jonathan Glancy, in a series of articles featuring the world’s ten best modern buildings included Holden’s masterpiece, Arnos Grove station. Many of the ‘Holden’ stations, especially those associated with the Piccadilly line extensions of the early 1930s have achieved listed status. Holden’s other outstanding contributions to London’s architectural heritage is the daunting austere London University Senate House, (1932 – 1937), with its ziggurat-like tower. (One of those popular but quite unverifiable myths is that had Hitler invaded in 1940 this building was to be
the HQ of the Whermacht). Holden’s 55 Broadway building, (1927–1929) the HQ of the UERL and subsequently London Transport, has just had its listing upgraded from grade II to grade I, a significant recognition of the importance of Holden’s work to the fabric of London. There is an architectural similarity between the two office complexes. My interest in Holden’s work springs, in part, from attempting to understand why he adopted such a unique style for his classical Underground stations, one that remains essentially modern today and makes the building immediately, probably at an unconscious level, recognisable as an Underground station to most Londoners. This is a successful example of subliminal branding and it is exactly what Frank Pick, (1878–1941), the Underground’s manag-
A Q uaker
ing director and Holden’s patron set out to achieve. But, why did Holden develop the style he did for his work for the Underground? In this short article, I approach this question from the knowledge that Charles Holden attended Quaker Meetings for most of his working life in London and although he never formally joined the Religious Society of Friends nevertheless regarded himself as a fully committed Quaker. Therefore, was there a spiritual dimension or motivation in Holden’s mature work and did his station design reflect the Quaker testimony to simplicity that Holden would have embraced? I think they did, but most people will pass daily through Holden’s stations blissfully unaware of this possible dimension to their surroundings. Why should they? After all, travelling on the Underground doesn’t usually provoke meditative reflection on the experience and an attempt to seek the spiritual origin of the building they are rushing through.
Today the passenger will have to look beyond the clutter of signage and cabling and the accretions of age to appreciate a simple, straightforward, uncluttered design. Influenced in his practice by the Arts and Crafts ideal of honesty in construction, Holden’s stations are characterised by strong but simple shapes, and the use of natural warm red or brown brick be-
and the
Underground
Colonnade of the shopping centre, with Southgate station on the right Adams Holden & Pearson, 1933 RIBA Collections, London
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Station concourse, Cockfosters station Adams Holden & Pearson, 1933 RIBA Collections, London
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tween exposed high quality concrete and natural-looking quarry tiles. The station buildings are devoid of fussy decoration and when built avoided the excesses of the Art-Deco flashy styling more associated with cinemas of the same interwar period. Compare a Holden station with, say, the Southern Railway’s approach to architectural style in the 1930s, a good comparative London example being Surbiton. At Surbiton, were you to think about it, you would somehow just know that you were not in an ‘Underground’ station. Today Holden’s stations are often referred
to as ‘Art Deco’ which, in my view, is a lazy description. Modern, yes; resonances of the classical style, perhaps. They certainly contained some limited Art-Deco decorative detailing, for example, the fluted tulip shaped up-lighters introduced on the northern extension of the Piccadilly line. But otherwise they are an almost unique idiom of British modernism. One writer, Michael Sackler, has intriguingly described Holden’s style and approach as an essay in ‘Medieval Modernism’ reflecting on Holden’s assimilation of Arts and Crafts thinking into a modern architectural idiom. The
A Q uaker
and the
Underground
overall effect of Holden’s stations remains modern, restrained, calm, and glimpses of this are still to be seen underneath the predations of upgrading and neglect. His work for the Underground was commissioned by its Managing Director, the personally austere Frank Pick, who promoted good design - ‘Fitness for Purpose’ - to almost the level of a religious creed. Pick, whilst ensuring good design was paramount, was also interested in the station as being a functional tool to ensure the most efficient use of space and every design aspect was subordinate to the ease of passenger flow. Much of the layout and accessibility of a Holden station is thus influenced by these imperatives. The famous tour of the modern brick architecture of northern Europe undertaken by Pick and Holden in 1930 may also have influenced Holden’s approach although architectural historians are not united on quite how much. Eiten Karol in his biography suggests Holden searched for the ‘elemental’ in architecture. He sought to create in his work the principles of ‘truth, order and clarity’. His belief, inspired by the social reformer Edward Carpenter, (1844–1929) in the ‘simple life’, influenced his desire to make his buildings simple and in relation to decoration, embellishment and ornament, he strove to, in his own words, ‘when in doubt, leave it out’. Eitan Karol suggests that the most formative influence on Holden’s work was the ‘rough hewn, honest naked and unashamed’ poetry of Walt Whitman seen by the young Holden and his associates as a manifesto for a spiritually creative life. Holden spoke of his Quakerism in terms of ‘simplicity’,
‘restraint’, and ‘sincerity’, terms that can be applied to his Underground stations. The parallel between this and the Quaker values of simplicity, and seeking honesty in living an uncluttered life are clear. Christian Barman in his biography of Frank Pick, The Man Who Built London Transport, offers a first-hand picture of Charles Holden,
The exposed concrete design of Cockfosters station Adams Holden & Pearson, 1933 RIBA Collections, London
“...a man of short stature with a calm earnest face enlivened by reflections from the gold round-rimmed spectacles which he was never seen without. From each 27
CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Enfield West station (later renamed Oakwood) Topical Press, 1933 London Transport Museum, London (from left to right)
side of a lofty forehead...the hair hung down vertically; the little beard meticulously trimmed, suggested an unimpressive chin. Somehow when you got to know him a little you were not surprised to discover he was a Quaker; that he was a craftsman who knew how to use his hands; that he neither smoked nor drank; or that his home was in Welwyn Garden City. He spoke little, in a soft colourless voice; it was as though he distrusted speech and used only the barest necessity.” It can be argued that the success of London Transport’s design policy was rooted in the successful professional relationship between Holden and Frank Pick, underpinned by their spiritual beliefs. Pick was a self-effacing man whose religious origins were a fusion of Wesleyism and Congre-
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gationalism. It is likely that the underlying success in their collaboration lay in the shared, but not stated, deeply spiritual approach to their task. Their continuing artistic and business association lasted nearly 20 years, leading the architectural press to refer to them as the ‘Puritan and Quaker’. In 1942 Holden wrote, “...I was born in an industrial age; ...that I was urged by a passion for building and for service... and that I have an invincible belief in the power of the human soul, the God in man, to rise above, and master ugliness and desolating conditions.” Pick, in his quest for ‘Fitness for Purpose’ in the designs he commissioned from Holden for the Underground, wrote,
A Q uaker
and the
Underground
“Fitness for purpose must transcend the merely practical and serve a moral and spiritual order as well’. Pick suggested saw the building of a modern transport system as the equivalent of the construction of a medieval cathedral, ‘an integrated work of art that would be a joy to both maker and users.” In Holden, Pick found his master mason.
This is an amended article that first appeared in ‘the Friend’ Vol. 169, No. 4 January 28th 2011.
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
An architecture free from fads and aesthetic conceits Jonathan Glancey 30
An
First topological map of the London Underground System Henry Charles Beck,1931 London Transport Museum, London
architecture free from fads and aesthetic conceits
The first of Charles Holden’s tube stations for Frank Pick was Sudbury Town, on the Piccadilly line, opened in 1931. There had been nothing like this distinctly modern yet well-crafted building in Britain before. With typical modesty, Holden, a retiring, teetotal, vegetarian Quaker draper’s son from Bolton, Lancashire, chose to describe his first modern masterpiece as “a brick box with a concrete lid.”
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
Possibly, just possibly, Holden meant something more. I can’t help thinking that this truly great and still under-rated English architect was thinking of Inigo Jones (1573–1652), who had instigated a revolution in British architecture in the reign of James I when he designed the country’s first truly classical buildings. When his client Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, asked Jones to add a chapel “as cheap as a barn” to his smart residential development built around the new Covent Garden piazza, the architect replied “then you shall have the handsomest barn in England.” Sudbury Town station is surely transport design’s equivalent of St Paul’s, Covent Garden. Born in 1875, Charles Henry Holden faced a testing childhood. His father went bankrupt and the boy’s mother died when he was just eight years old. Working first as a railway store clerk and then as a chemical laboratory assistant before being articled to EW Leeson, a Manchester
Postcard advertising the new Piccadilly Circus station Adams Holden & Pearson, 1928 London Transport Museum, London
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architect, he went on to become a star pupil at Manchester School of Art. His career took off. Although Holden’s was a singular talent in terms of innovative design, he was for almost his entire career a partner of Adams, Holden and Pearson, a successful commercial practice that folded quietly in the 1970s. His earliest designs were for pareddown Tudor gothic and Arts and Crafts hospitals - often likened to the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, although the two men were entirely unconnected before he truly got into his stride with the help of Frank Pick, whom he met in 1916. Following the critical success of his Piccadilly Circus station (1928), he designed the impressive and wholly original headquarters for the London Underground group. This tour de force, complete with external relief sculptures by, among other artists, Henry Moore, Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill, was completed in 1929. A few
An
minutes’ walk from Westminster Abbey, its design is based on a cruciform, each office bathed with daylight. Sudbury Town, Arnos Grove and many other underground stations and their equipment and details followed. His last designs for Pick included the Moscow metro-style station at Gants Hill on the Central line completed after the second world war. Pick had been an adviser to the design, if not the construction, of Stalin’s brilliant metropolitan plaything. Holden, one of those architects one dreams of having met and interviewed, said little in public - partly because he was shy, but also because he believed architecture was a collaborative process. There was one other reason: he felt that architecture should be a quiet and dignified pursuit. He would not have fared well in
architecture free from fads and aesthetic conceits
today’s celebrity-obsessed era. He did, though, spell out, in typically blunt terms, the characteristics of the type of building he thought worth designing: “A building which takes naturally and inevitably the form controlled by the plan and the purpose and the materials. A building which provides opportunities for the exercise and skill and pleasure in work not only to the designer but also for the many craftsmen employed and the occupants of the building.”
The so-called ‘Moscow Concourse’ at Gants Hill station London Express/ Stringer, 1947 Hulton Archive
Most of all, he wanted to design a form of architecture free from fads and passing aesthetic conceits. As far as possible, he wanted to shape and craft a timeless architecture. He would have made a good medieval master mason.
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CHARLES HOLDEN
Legacy in London Underground architecture
although he rejected a knighthood twice, he did accept the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1936.
Poster advertising the station architecture of the Piccadilly line extension as an attraction in themselves 1933 London Transport Museum, London
“I discovered,” he said, when discussing his designs for Senate House, the mighty Portland stone tower that announces the University of London from far off, “the significance of form as distinct from the tricks of architectural ornament. The building would take on its character of its own, often requiring little in the way of embellishment and finally confirmed my slogan ‘when in doubt leave it out’.” “I don’t seek for a style, either ancient or modern,” he wrote in a revealing, if clumsy, essay, The Kind of Architecture We Want in Britain, published in 1957. “I want an architecture which is through and through a good building. A building planned for a specific purpose, constructed in the method and use of materials, old or new, most appropriate to the purpose the building has to serve.” Clearly not a great writer, Holden was at his most effective in one-to-one meetings with clients. Pick, of course, was his ideal client. He was, though, lionised by those who worked with, or for, him, and
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Unlike those of his much-liked underground stations, Holden’s designs for London University (1931–37) remain controversial. Here, in the heart of Bloomsbury and close to that great store of classical antiquities, the British Museum, he planned an enormous campus, all built in solid stone, comprising a pair of skyscraper-high towers and no fewer than 17 courtyards linked by a powerful spine of continuous building. Only a part of the scheme was ever realised, and perhaps this was just as well. Although powerful and superbly built, Senate House and its attendant buildings feel cold, remote and even rather frightening despite Holden’s rich use of materials and decoration inside, including stained-glass windows and a colourful, whimsical map of London made by McDonald Gill (1887–1947), brother of the priapic typographer Eric Gill. It was no wonder that George Orwell modelled his Ministry of Truth, in his novel 1984, on Senate House. Holden said he had designed the tower, effectively London’s first skyscraper, so that it would “appear with quiet insistence.” Quiet insistence is an apt metaphor for the work of this idiosyncratic yet brilliant architect, whose finest work remains not some great university tower or civic hall or public gallery, but an underground station in what is, otherwise, an unremarkable north London suburb today.
This article was published in the Guardian on 16 October 2007.
An
architecture free from fads and aesthetic conceits
Sketch of the perspective view of the Senate House, University of London Charles Holden, 1926 School of Advanced Study, University of London
Aerial Sketch of the Senate House, University of London Charles Holden, 1938 RIBA Collections, London
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Source of text
CHARLES HOLDEN: an introduction Wikipedia (2017). Charles Holden. Retrieved April 5, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holden Underground Journeys: Charles Holden’s designs for LondonTransport / The V&A + RIBA Architecture Partnership The V&A + RIBA Architecture Partnership. (2010, October). Underground Journeys: Charles Holden’s designs for London Transport. Retrieved April 5, 2017, from https:// www.architecture.com/Files/RIBATrust/RIBALibrary/VAndAPartnership/UndergroundJourneysGalleryGuide.pdf A Quaker and the Underground / David Burnell Burnell, D. (2011, April). A Quaker and the Underground. Retrieved April 5, 2017, from www.londonhistorians.org/index.php?s=file_download&id=27 An architecture free from fads and aesthetic conceits / Jonathan Glancey Glancey, J. (2007, October 16). An architecture free from fads and aesthetic conceits. Retrieved April 5, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/ oct/16/architecture4
Night view of the illuminated tower, Boston Manor station Dell & Wainwright, 1935 RIBA Collections, London (page 4, opposite to contents) Site of Brent station (later renamed Brent Cross) on Northern Line Edgware Extension Topical Press, 1922 London Transport Museum, London
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This book has been designed by Justin Yim, Philadelphia. Text is set in Gill Sans. Gill Sans designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill based Gill Sans on Edward Johnston’s 1916 typeface “Johnston”, the corporate typeface of the London Underground. Created in Adobe InDesign and Photoshop CC 2017.