65 and 65a Basinghall Street, City of London, London

Summary

Former exhibition hall, magistrates court and offices, now converted to offices, 1966-69, by Richard Gilbert Scott of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Son and Partner.

The map accompanying this List entry is schematic, showing the building's extent based on published plans of the site. It is open to some inaccuracy as much of the building's footprint is below ground so has had to be approximated.

Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the hard landscaping over the footprint of the lower levels of the building, and the interior of the building, are not of special architectural or historic interest.

Description

Former exhibition hall, magistrates' court and offices, now converted to offices, 1966-1969, by Richard Gilbert Scott of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Son and Partner.

MATERIALS: the building is concrete-framed, constructed in-situ, with pre-cast facing panels to the elevations. The panels are of polished white cement with Capstone aggregate, giving them a milky cream colour. The vaulting over part of the building is of pre-cast concrete. Windows and glazed openings have bronzed metal frames, replaced in some parts with newer metal frames of similar colour.

PLAN: the building’s plan is complex due to its multiple, split levels with varying footprints. Above street level the building is arranged roughly in an L-shape, lining the inside corner of Basinghall Street which runs north/south, turns a corner and then runs westward. To the south of the building is a raised terrace which steps down to street level to the south and east. The hard landscaping* over the terrace is excluded from the listing.

The Basinghall Street level (entered from the east) extends beneath the exhibition hall, first floor offices and raised terrace. This originally contained the magistrates’ courts, associated administrative offices, and cells on a half-level beneath. There are two/three levels of car parking beneath this. On these levels the building’s footprint is at its largest. The first floor has a much smaller footprint and is expressed as two elements, linked by a canopy: the former exhibition hall (now 65a) to the west, which is entered from the south, via the raised terrace, and some first floor offices to the east entered from the Basinghall Street entrance below. These two elements are separated by a canopied gap, giving access to the high walkway which crosses over Basinghall Street.

EXTERIOR: the building’s location and layout are such that all its elevations, bar the west flank of the former exhibition hall, are prominent. The building appears as a series of distinct volumes and planes, at some points flowing from one to another, in others butted together or overlapping. Perhaps the most distinctive feature is its curved concrete vaulting, which forms the roof of the exhibition hall to the west, stepping up to form part of the roof of the eastern element, and providing a canopy over the gap between the two. It rests on elegant, tapering columns and over-sails the building's elevations, terminating in dynamic 'mid-flight'.

The building’s east elevation, facing Basinghall Street, is slightly cranked and is composed of several volumes. Glazing is broken down into narrow strips by vertical concrete fins which are divided horizontally by a smooth storey band, and which run up the face of the building, overshooting the flat roof to create a toothed parapet. An internal stair is expressed externally by its enclosure in a curved, un-fenestrated tower, and the north corner of the building is slightly set back, with a glazed entrance beneath a segmental arch; a shape which echoes the over-sailing arch of the concrete-vaulted roof above. Beneath the vault is segmental clerestory glazing. The first floor is lit by a series of narrow strip windows. The north elevation has an irregular arrangement of punched openings, and a run of vertical strip windows on the ground floor. At first floor is the wide walkway which forms a bridge between the Guildhall site and the opposite side of Basinghall Street. The former exhibition hall is lit by T-shaped clerestory glazing beneath the over-sailing concrete vaulted roof.

As viewed from the raised terrace, the elevations to the east continue the use of vertical fins, strip windows and areas of smooth, unbroken surface. The concrete vaulting is supported on narrow square columns which taper upwards; these are freestanding where they support the canopy over the walkway, and glazed between to enclose the former exhibition hall. The glazing is a replacement to accommodate the inserted floor into what was originally a double-height space.

INTERIOR: the interiors* are excluded from the listing.

* Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the aforementioned features are not of special architectural or historic interest.

History

65 and 65a Basinghall Street was built between December 1966 and July 1969, the first of a series of extensions to the City of London's Guildhall made by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Son and Partner following a master plan approved in November 1960. Sir Giles had been appointed to remodel and extend the Guildhall precinct as early as 1934, but the proposals were frustrated by the war and when he returned to the site in 1948 his first charge was to rebuild the gutted interior of the Guildhall itself, with a new roof on pointed stone arches. When his revised master plan was rejected by the Corporation in 1957, shortly before his retirement, Sir Giles passed the commission to his son Richard (1923-2017). The scheme was to be the latter’s most important secular work, which he completed only in 1999 shortly before his own retirement.

Richard Gilbert Scott’s scheme was set out in clear phases, although not all were realised. The first was the block on Basinghall Street (now 65 and 65a), built as an exhibition hall and offices reached up steps above a partially submerged ground floor containing two temporary magistrates’ courts (with cells) and a records store over basement car parking. The requirements were complex and the late addition of the magistrates’ courts to the brief was one reason for the long delay between the master plan and the start of building. Another was the car park, which required excavation to a depth of over forty feet. There was also a requirement for open space, so a feature was made of the raised terrace over the magistrates' court. This also enabled the site to form a link to the high walkway beginning to be developed as a pedestrian route from the Barbican development to the river, following a proposal made in Holden and Holford’s plan for the City of 1948.

The principal alterations to the building’s interior since its construction are the conversion of 65a Basinghall Street (the former exhibition hall) into office space, and the opening-up of the magistrates' courts (part of 65 Basinghall Street) also to form office space. The hard landscaping has also been altered, the raised terrace to the south has been repaved, losing the original pattern of hexagonal paving and glass lenses, and the flight of steps leading up to the exhibition hall has been reconfigured to create a light well and lifts from the terrace down into the office space below. A scheme of retaining walls and plant boxes which were part of this landscaping has also been lost.

Richard Gilbert Scott represented the fourth generation of Britain’s best-known architectural dynasty. Richard Gilbert Scott, however, was one of the few architects whose work genuinely bridged the divide between classicism and modernism. He studied at Cambridge and Regent Street Polytechnic, with an interruption for war service. His long career spanned from the 1950s to 2000 and he inherited many large uncompleted commissions from his father, Sir Giles, among them Liverpool Cathedral, Bankside Power Station and extensions to Charterhouse School. He was left to develop his own style in small church schemes, such as St Mark’s Church, Biggin Hill (listed Grade II), and the Roman Catholic commissions inherited from his uncle, Adrian Gilbert Scott. The exception among the larger secular schemes was the Guildhall, a project that occupied his entire career from the early 1950s onwards, and where he was able to produce an entirely new design that shows his distinctive style.

Scott’s stylish use of pre-cast concrete shell vaulting at the Guildhall was a response to the existing Gothic architecture of the site. In the later phases he used pointed arches, rather than the round arches over the exhibition hall and offices which are more tent-like and fun. Scott made the design in about 1961-1963, the heyday of the smooth cast concrete arch or umbrella vault, so called since as the supporting column is often central. Various sources have been suggested for this feature but a key one is perhaps the work of the Spanish-born, Mexico-based, architect-engineer, Félix Candela, who developed thin, hyperbolic shell vaults that were economical as well as dramatic. He visited Britain to lecture in 1959 and worked on one building here, the former John Lewis warehouse in Stevenage, 1963 (listed grade II). He did not invent shell vaults but as an architect and academic he did much to popularise their use.

Reasons for Listing

No 65 and 65a Basinghall Street, 1966-69, by Richard Gilbert Scott, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for its creative composition of plane, form and interconnected masses;

* for its use of materials, in particular the elegant polished white cement cladding and distinctive, celebratory, concrete shell-vaulting;

* in its skilful planning, providing varied accommodation, open space and a high-level pedestrian link, on a corner plot.

Historic interest:

* as the first part of the architect’s most significant secular commission, distinctively expressing his personal style and establishing his creative, Modern, response to the medieval Gothic of this important site;

* as one element of the contribution made to the site over a period of almost seventy years by England’s most celebrated architectural dynasty.

External Links

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