The Architecture of Denys Lasdun: Early Work

Denys Lasdun (1914-2001) was one of the greatest British architects of the post-war period.  He designed some of the most notable examples of Brutalist architecture in Britain, including the National Theatre in London.  Lasdun's style combined cubic towers, bare concrete and jutting horizontal planes.  He developed a language of architecture that was tough, tectonic and highly intellectual.

Lasdun studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.  He then joined the practice of Wells Coates, the Canadian-born architect and designer who created some of the finest examples of Modernism in Britain.  This gave Lasdun an understanding of the fundamental principles of Modernism.  Like other post-war British architects, including Basil Spence and Alison and Peter Smithson, Lasdun was influenced by pioneer Modernists Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  However, he had reservations about the Modernist ethos: ‘One of the troubles with the Bauhaus was . . . that a number of brilliant and precise perceptions about architecture and design were lost in a generalised philosophy that soon came to be looked on as a universal panacea for solving any architect’s problems anywhere.’

After military service, Lasdun worked for Tecton, the practice founded by Berthold Lubetkin, another pioneer of Modernism in Britain.  He became a partner in Tecton and designed a private house at 32 Newton Road, Paddington in a style influenced by the early villas of Le Corbusier.  The artist Ronald Searle lived here.

After the war, Lasdun worked with Lindsey Drake on the Hallfield Estate, which had been planned by Lubetkin and Tecton.  Lasdun designed Hallfield School, which gave the first indication of his mature style in its use of bare concrete and angularity, as well as the fact that it retained a human scale.  Hallfield School was influenced by his old master Berthold Lubetkin, but adopted a freer, more organic, form.  Built of pre-cast concrete, the school could have been intimidating to young children, but Lasdun tried to create a sympathetic building.  The cluster of low classrooms and courtyards are sheltered under the curve of the junior block.  This helps to create intimate spaces in scale with the children. 

Lasdun's originality became more evident in Keeling House (1957), a 14-storey block of flats in Bethnal Green.  Lasdun was concerned that earlier Modernist designs did not take sufficient account of what made neighbourhoods work.  The design responded to the widespread belief that much post-war development had created isolating environments that failed to generate any sense of community.  Lasdun sought to give residents a sense of place and belonging, replicating the good relations between neighbours which he noticed in traditional Victorian terraced streets. 

Keeling House is a cluster of 4 towers arranged around a central service core.  Each tower consists of maisonettes assembled into separately expressed units the size of a semi-detached house.  They are planned so that the sun reaches all habitable rooms during the day.  The tenants were able to pick out their own flats in the structure. Keeling House was initially popular with residents, but it suffered from the social problems that affected many Council estates in the 1970s and 80s.  The block was closed in 1992.  Keeling House is now a Grade II* listed building, the first example of post-war council housing to gain this distinction.   It was converted into luxury apartments between 1999 and 2001.  Lasdun supported the project, but regretted that the building would no longer house the poor.  Instead, a fashionable development has converted the two-bedroom maisonettes into modish pieds a terre.