Keep It Simple - John Winter - Pidgeon Digital

Keep It Simple | John Winter | Pidgeon Digital 14/05/20, 15:57
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Keep It Simple
John Winter
HOUSE IN NORWICH
©John Winter
I'm going to show some slides of the work of our practice which I hope has a
consistent theme in that in all cases the architectural expression relates directly to
the way the building is built. The first slide that I'm going to show is a house built in
Norwich in the mid-'50's. But it does note the interests that have stayed with me all
my life. On the outside of the building, that which is structural is brickwork, that
which is not structural is glass. On the inside of the house, you can see on the picture,
the partitions that are not structural are plywood. So it's very clear what holds the
roof up. The architecture is made out of the means of construction, and that is the
formula - if formula is the right word - that I have kept to all my life. It's a way of
communicating to the people who will see the building.
ERNO GOLDFINGER
©John Winter
https://www-pidgeondigital-com.proxy-auth3.iuav.it/talks/keep-it-simple/chapters/ Pagina 1 di 22
Two architects that I worked for after I left architecture school have had a great
influence on my subsequent work. The first of these is Erno Goldfinger, seen here on
his housing development in West Kensington. From him I learned a commitment to
the quality in architecture to go far beyond that which is reasonable; that one has to
endlessly search for a better solution, and that the better solution, in the true
Modern movement tradition, is based on function and on the means of building. I
have always found this a way of holding on to ones sanity in a world obsessed by
applied style.
3
MYRON GOLDSMITH
©John Winter
Here is Myron Goldsmith who, in the late 50's, was the senior structural engineer in
the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He is seen here in the hanger
built in San Francisco airport for United Airlines. From him I learned that structure is
always the basis for architectural design. As he said, a designer can never go too far
in a structural direction. In this building, built to house the first generation of jets, a
big double cantilever is made in steel supported on a concrete case which houses
offices and service spaces. In every case the structure tapers to follow the stresses
within.
4
FIRST WINTER HOUSE IN REGENTS PARK,
LONDON
©John Winter
When I returned to England in the late 50's I built myself a house in North London.
Building oneself a house is a tremendous effort and I found, as I built it, that I
simplified the construction and the design as I went along. You can see in the house a
very large window on the first floor. On the drawings this was sub-divided to give
opening lights and to give what I thought was an architectural expression. But when
one is under pressure, and it's raining in November, and one is feeling a bit miserable,
one simplifies. And this led in retrospect to a great improvement in the design.
5
HOUSE IN LEATHERHEAD
©John Winter
This was followed by the early years of practice with a series of small houses, each of
which was based on a structural theme. This one is based on a construction of brick
piers with the spaces between the piers built with solid or with glazing as
appropriate.
6
HOUSE IN ASCOT
©John Winter
This one is a very simple house based on five parallel brick walls. The grid of the
house is set on 1200 mm, that being the standard size in which most building
materials come. So, by looking at what industry produced, looking at the simple way
of putting them together, one tries to make an architecture.
7
HOUSING IN MILTON KEYNES
©John Winter
The use of cross-wells as construction is most appropriate in housing. And this is a

small development carried out in Milton Keynes with my associate Chris Clark and
myself in the early 70's. The Modern movement gave us the idea that architectural
quality should run through all buildings, not just the great monuments. But
unfortunately we get too involved in complicated theories and lose the ability to do a
simple job simply. Here we have tried to do housing, perhaps the most basic task of
architects, in a simple way. The structural system defines each dwelling, telling
people which is their home, and makes the architecture.
HOUSING IN MILTON KEYNES

©John Winter
On the other side, on the sloping and beautiful site where it faces onto parkland, the
structural system is once again used to show which is each dwelling. And above these
are planted roofs to enjoy the wonderful landscape.
HOUSE AT VIRGINIA WATER

©John Winter
This is a steel-framed house on a very beautiful site about sixteen miles from London.
Steel is a wonderful material for building houses when the site is open and relatively
private. We have found that with steel construction, because of the cold bridging
problems, one has to put the steel frame either entirely outside in the cold or entirely
inside in the warm. In this one the steel frame is placed entirely outside in the cold,
and you can see on the picture that the frame is made of galvanised steel to protect it
from rust, but you can also see that the inside structure is just painted red because
there is no need for an expensive finish internally.
10
HOUSE AT VIRGINIA WATER
©John Winter
On the finished house you can see that a fairly traditional and partly self build
cladding has been placed within the steel frame. In this case the steel frame went up
quickly and enabled the interior work to proceed through the winter, under shelter,
and in more comfortable conditions than building workers are used to working in.
11
SECOND WINTER HOUSE, HIGHGATE, LONDON
©John Winter
This shows a house that I designed and built for myself in the mid 1960's on a very
beautiful site in Highgate Cemetery in North London. In this case, and unlike the
previous house, the steel frame is kept entirely internal and in the warm, and there is
an outside cladding that is of COR-TEN steel which is a steel that weathers and rusts
with age, and the two are separated, one from the other, with a layer of insulation.
On this picture you can see the house under construction and the COR-TEN is just
starting to weather. It took about 2½ years to reach a fairly smooth finish and it then
goes on rusting very, very slowly and, in this case, where we have steel about 2 mm, it
has a life expectancy of about 800 years.
12
SECOND WINTER HOUSE, HIGHGATE, LONDON
©John Winter
This is a close-up of the house near the end of the construction period, a photograph
taken about six months after the previous slide. You will see that, once again, the
architectural expression derives from the way the building is built. COR-TEN is a
material that weathers well when rain-water can run over the surface. It is therefore
not acceptable to have any overhangs above the COR-TEN. So the upper floors,
where there is COR-TEN below the windows, are kept very, very flush. But the
bottom floor, where there is no COR-TEN below the glass, can be slightly recessed
and given traditional weatherings. The windows are in fact flaps made of insulated
metal and COR-TEN on the outside, and the far windows are shown in the open
position. By using flaps as opposed to conventional opening lights, we have the ideal
situation for stopping the house getting too hot in sunny weather, in that the curtains
can be left drawn across the glass but the flap can be left open to ventilation. When
you build in steel it is natural to fill in the frame with glass as far as is practicable, and
in this case we had a site which was wonderfully private, although it's only four miles
from the centre of London. We planned the interior to respond to the privacy and
the access. The entrance floor - which is for children, dogs, bicycles - is fairly roughly-
used, with a tiled floor at ground level relating to the earth, and sliding doors around
so that the house can be opened onto the garden, and the garden and house can
function as one private level area. Up one floor to the family bedrooms. This floor is
still slightly private because the house is surrounded by a high Victorian wall. Then
up another floor where there is one open architectural extravagance, if you like, one
big open room, glazed all round, giving views out across London. This top-floor room
is kept very simple with the regular steel structure clearly exposed. The dimensions
of the structure are all based on the golden series, and I would like to think that the
space has a quality of measured calm, a quality that I would rate amongst the highest
of architectural virtues, and I personally find it necessary to sit in a calm space from
time to time to recuperate from the hectic pace of modern urban life.
13
HOUSE IN HIGHGATE, LONDON

©John Winter
This is a steel-framed house on another cemetery site with beautiful views across
central London. The views are only obtainable from the first floor and therefore all
the living space is to be at the first floor; and you can see from the slide that we have
arranged for this upper floor to be a steel box in which life takes place, with the lesser
functions relegated to the lower level. The site here was very bad in that we had to
go down seven metres before we found bearing surface to support our building. So,
with Frank Newby as our engineer, we designed a house on a single central support.
14
HOUSE IN HIGHGATE, LONDON
©John Winter
Here you see a progress photo of the house under construction. You can see, on the
ground floor, a short concrete wall which goes down into the earth and supports the
entire building. Across this is the red beam; this is entirely internal so it does not
need galvanising and so it is finished in a red paint. This cantilevers in two directions
and on each end it supports another beam which again cantilevers in two directions.
In all cases these beams and their diagonals are left exposed on the finished building,
so that the architecture comes from the construction and from an explanation of the
way stresses go in cantilevers, because the diagonals are always in tension. So the
experience of walking around inside the house, and of walking around outside the
house, is of walking through and around a steel structure on the scale of a small
bridge.
15
WINTER SEASIDE HOUSE, NORFOLK

©John Winter
This is our most recent steel house, and in our newer buildings we have tried to work
with much lighter sections using much less material. In this case, the main structural
columns are only 35 m diameter. We've also tried to use steel members to serve
more than one function. For example, the edge beam acts as a gutter, and a bracing at
the end of the building is this gutter taken down to the ground so that the rain-water
is taken away from the building. The roof is corrugated metal, plastic-coated on its
maximum span, and it spans right across the building, not penetrated in the middle
because when this material fails, it fails at the fixing points, and, in this case, the fixing
points are all over the gutters, so if there is a leak it doesn't matter. This construction
also throws up the advantage that the sunlight going through the ends of the
corrugation makes a continual and varied play of light on the ground, on the walls,
and, in the afternoon, inside the building itself. The building is on the edge of the sea
and salt spray is blown over it, so all materials are chosen with a permanent coating
so that they will have a long life and not need maintenance in this position.
16
WINTER SEASIDE HOUSE, NORFOLK

©John Winter
I sometimes think that we should consider which products of our time our grand-
children will look back to with admiration in the way that we look back to the
Parthenon or to Chartres Cathedral. I think they will probably not look back on our
buildings with such admiration. But small boats, yes; cameras, motor-bikes, hi-fi
equipment, yes. I find myself envious of the straightforward confidence of the small
boat designers and would like to think that some of their attitude has rubbed off on
our own work. Here you can see our house with the roof extended, functionally to
cover cars but in reality so that the structure is shown in all its lightness. The
extension is, if you like, the architecture.
17
FIRST BUILDING FOR MORLEY COLLEGE, LONDON

©John Winter
Now we will move on to some of our bigger buildings. This is Morley College, an
aided Institute of Adult Education, built in 1972 in South London. On bigger
buildings the skin tends to take over from the frame in being the architectural
expression. And, in this case, the client felt that this was an awful waste to have an
educational building empty over the summer in Central London where there is such
a demand for tourists. And so it was a requirement that the whole building be
converted to provide bedrooms for visiting students. This set up a module of about
2.5 m which was the bedroom size; and this took over, in planning terms and in the
architectural expression, from the planning of the individual rooms inside it, in that
they all became a module of the bedroom size. And so it is the bedroom size that is
permanent and it is the bedroom size that is expressed on the outside of the building.
In this case there were very onerous light angles so that the skin had to be wrapped
very tightly around the functions; and we did this with sloping roofs on the top floor,
so that we could bring the edge down to a low level and give that wonderful feeling
of glass going up and meeting the sky.
18
FIRST BUILDING FOR MORLEY COLLEGE, LONDON

©John Winter
In this close-up you can see how the glass goes up and meets the sky and how the
skin is wrapped very tightly around the structure. This gives an insulated envelope
for the building, with the structure kept altogether inside in the warm; and it enables
continual alterations to be made to the inside without affecting the exterior of the
building.
19
SECOND BUILDING FOR MORLEY COLLEGE,

LONDON
©John Winter
This is a second building for the same client, built in 1982 - 83, where the light angles
were so onerous that a simple straightforwardly-shaped building was not possible or
practicable. We needed a building that stepped down to the rear; and if we are
having a building that steps down, it seems sensible to make use of the space
internally and to provide rooms inside which are very low at the outside of the
building, rising up to very high in the inside of the building. So the architecture for
the inside of the building is an architecture of sloping ceilings. On the outside, these
roofs and the walls are made of COR-TEN. Once again we're looking for a long-life
material, and I find it very attractive to have a machine-made material which
weathers and becomes more beautiful with age. However, in its first two years of its
life, COR-TEN is not a beautiful material. It is very patchy. So the windows and the
gutters are plastic-coated steel with a yellow finish so that there's a very dominant
geometry taking over from the patchiness of the cladding panels. This picture was
taken about 3 years after the building was finished when the COR-TEN had achieved
its final finish. COR-TEN is an ideal material for roofing because, to weather at its
best, it needs a continual run of rain and sun, and this is just what a roof gives.
20
ROCHESTER CASTLE: NEW ROOF TO FORE

BUILDING
©John Winter
We were very lucky around 1980 in that English Heritage entrusted some of their
wonderful buildings to us. This picture shows Rochester Castle, one of the most
important Norman castles in the country and built in the early 12th century. The
castle had a fore-building which, when we were appointed, was a derelict shell. We
were asked to insert the floors and make available to the public, access to the top
floor which had been a chapel. We knew exactly how the floors were constructed
and therefore we were able to reinstate them as they were when the building was
first built. We did not know, and we were not able to find out, how the roof was
constructed. In fact we are not sure whether the roof was built at all. We therefore
had nothing to go on to make a historical design and it was therefore appropriate
that we designed a modern roof, which was clear to all visitors that this was a
modern insertion, so we took advantage of the fact, to use a roof that would allow
the light to come through. We have done this in a Teflon-coated fibre-glass in 2
squares, one of which goes over the chancel of the chapel, and one over the nave. If
you have a Teflon-coated light roof like this, it sets up a very strong horizontal force
around the perimeter. We have resisted this with a steel, wide flange section laid on
its side so that it acts as a gutter collecting all the rain-water. This steel gutter is
simply laid in place on an offset on the stone work, because part of our brief was that
our new roof should be able to be removed without in any way interfering with the
old structure. The gutter is taken across the roof to divide the roof into 2 rectangles;
and the roof slopes up to a little dome in polycarbonate in the middle, from which a
stainless steel pole goes down to 4 tension cables; so that the roof spans and is
supported at its 4 corners and is stretched all round from the gutters.
21
NO. 6 BOATHOUSE, PORTSMOUTH NAVAL BASE

©John Winter
Another wonderful historic building that we are now working on is No. 6 Boathouse
in the historic naval base at Portsmouth. This building, built by the Royal Engineers in
1845, should have a noble place in the history of metal construction. The iron beams,
spanning about 14 m, have a cast iron beam with an outrigger on the underside built
in wrought iron. This has two functions: partly wrought iron is good in tension and
cast iron is good in compression, so that it uses each material appropriately; it is also
probable that the Victorians, by 1845, after a series of disastrous mill fires, had
found out that cast iron performs badly in fire in that it cracks; and that by having
wrought iron members below, the structure would hold long enough for people to
escape if there was a bad fire. The structure here is very wonderful and it is all put
together without bolts and without rivets; the castings are so made that the beams
slot onto columns and joists slot onto beams. The outriggers under the beams are
simply held in place by hinges in a place that we would regard as absolutely correct
to have hinges. So it is a forerunner of many of our modern structures, and is a very,
very beautiful and wonderful structure.
22
BUILDING OPPOSITE NO. 6 BOATHOUSE

©John Winter
We were asked to build a new shopping and restaurant building immediately

opposite the Boathouse seen in the last slide. There is a building on the site which we
have demolished in order to build our new building but we have used its old piled
foundations, put down in the 1930's, to support our new frame. The new structure is
held outside the habitable part of the building, so that it is clear of any fire and we
can have an exposed metal structure. In this case we are looking at tapered cast iron
columns and steel beams. The steel beams themselves make a nod in the direction of
the beams in Boathouse 6 opposite, which was shown in the previous slide, in that
these beams will consist of a steel tube with steel rods underneath them acting as
their tension members. This will be exposed all round the building in a series of
galleries and will run through inside the building, where there are open spaces, and
down to restaurants on the west side of the building where there is a view across the
harbour.
23
OFFICE BUILDING, MANSELL STREET, LONDON.

DESIGNED IN COLLABORATION WITH ELANA
KEATS & JONATHAN ELLIS-MILLER
©Peter Durant
The final building is a speculative office building on the eastern fringe of the centre of
London. The building is a very normal and, if you like, banal type in speculative
building, built for occupants unknown by a developer. This has led to a response in
the surrounding buildings of having very decorated and complicated structures. We
wished to go to the other extreme, and to have a simple structure, yet it was a
requirement from the client that it should stand out and be seen as a "prestige"
building that people would want to rent. This building was designed in collaboration
with Elana Keats and Jonathan Ellis-Miller from my office. It is a simple reinforced
concrete, long span structure giving the office accommodation. But on the road side,
a 3 m deep bay window is added as a projection, so that the office floors become
balconies to this big space. It is as if we had pulled the atrium, which is a convention
for office buildings at the moment, pulled it onto the outside and made it onto the
street. So that the great space of the building is not a private space in the middle but
is shared with all the passers-by. This space is constructed of a very, very light steel
frame with hangers from the roof to support the glass. It has great environmental
benefit in that it shields the offices from the traffic noise which, on Mansell Street, is
a very big problem. It also has energy advantages in that it enables the heat in
summer to be extracted from fans on the roof, whilst in the winter it can retain the
heat of the sun.
24
OFFICE BUILDING, MANSELL STREET, LONDON.

DESIGNED IN COLLABORATION WITH ELANA
KEATS & JONATHAN ELLIS-MILLER
©Peter Durant
The final slide shows a close-up looking up the bay window. The glass is all hung from
the roof on a series of cables. These cables support small steel members on which
are stainless steel cleats which can be seen in the slide. Onto these cleats are bolted
large sheets of glass each of which is held in place by eight bolts. This gives an
amazingly smooth clear glass elevation to a building. We just wanted to see how
simple we could make the outside skin of a building. But because life is more than
absolute simplicity and absolute minimalism, we wanted you to look through this
glass skin and see a complicated but elegant and minimal structure which would hold
up the glass and take the very considerable wind forces that blow onto a glass
window that is six stories high but not braced by any floors. I would like to think that
in the detailing of this building, with its steel cables made by yacht-builders, that we
have come near to my ideal of taking the approach of simple, straightforward but
high-performance problem- solving that one can see in small boat builders.
Related talks:
John Winter Tom Jestico Mark Whitby

Restoring Modern 1930s Houses Building Case Study 1 - Transfer Of Technology
1999 Government Offices: Inland 1992
Revenue Building, Scotland
1992
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Keep It Simple | John Winter | Pidgeon Digital 14/05/20, 15:57

HOME ABOUT EXPLORE SUBSCRIBE FAQ CONTACT

The use of cross-wells as construction is most appropriate in housing. And this is a

HOUSING IN MILTON KEYNES

HOUSE AT VIRGINIA WATER

there is no need for an expensive finish internally.

HOUSE IN HIGHGATE, LONDON

WINTER SEASIDE HOUSE, NORFOLK

WINTER SEASIDE HOUSE, NORFOLK

FIRST BUILDING FOR MORLEY COLLEGE, LONDON

FIRST BUILDING FOR MORLEY COLLEGE, LONDON

SECOND BUILDING FOR MORLEY COLLEGE,

ROCHESTER CASTLE: NEW ROOF TO FORE

NO. 6 BOATHOUSE, PORTSMOUTH NAVAL BASE

BUILDING OPPOSITE NO. 6 BOATHOUSE

We were asked to build a new shopping and restaurant building immediately

OFFICE BUILDING, MANSELL STREET, LONDON.

OFFICE BUILDING, MANSELL STREET, LONDON.

John Winter Tom Jestico Mark Whitby

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