Adie and Button

“The high regard for modern architecture and design today is arguably the work of Pioneers of Modern Design. Originally published in 1936 as Pioneers of the Modern Movement, this book by the late art historian Nikolaus Pevsner laid the foundation for the recognition of “modern design” by lining up a progressive historical narrative to explain the state of design after World War I. The German scholar attributed the history of modern design to individual architects, designers and their works, starting from William Morris of the Arts and Crafts movement to the “machine aesthetic” of Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus. Modern architecture and design, as Pevsner saw it, was the inevitable product of the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Noveau, and the emergence of steel as a building material.“ (Justin Zhuang)

Well, up to a point Lord Copper.

Stockwell Garage was Europe’s largest unsupported roof span when it was built in 1952. It came about as London transitioned from trams to buses (there’s room for two hundred of them), and a post-war steel shortage prompted architects Adie and Button to make “a bravura piece of reinforced concrete design” (Wiki). Will Self, whose opinion I don’t value, has called it the most important building in London. It certainly isn’t but it is Grade II* listed.

Pevsner is neutral: “A monumental home for 200 buses below a reinforced concrete shell roof on nine arches of considerable span (c. 73,000 sq. feet of uninterrupted garaging)” If he liked it he is keeping his feelings to himself.

Adie and Button did three more buildings in central London: flats on Piccadilly that have been converted into the Athenaeum Hotel, The Park Lane Hotel (now the Sheraton Grand London Park Lane Hotel) and another block of flats, on Exhibition Road. Pevsner calls the Park Lane Hotel “rather grim” but it has changed a lot since 1927 as has the Athenaeum Hotel. The flats at 59 – 63 Princes Gate on Exhibition Road are substantially as they were built in 1938.

“This strikingly clean-cut apartment block was erected in 1937–8 to the designs of Adie, Button & Partners. Built of reinforced concrete faced monolithically in reconstituted Portland stone and with ‘wrap-around’ corner windows, it much resembles their contemporary Athenaeum Court in Piccadilly.” (Survey of London: Volume 45, Knightsbridge)

It seems strange that Pevsner, such a champion of post-war modern design, does not mention such a good looking piece of Art Deco architecture.