Читать книгу A Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land - Joshua Abbott - Страница 7

Barnet is probably the most rural of the northern boroughs, with the countryside appearing just north of High Barnet, and villages such as Totteridge and Monken Hadley maintaining a semi-rural air. Much of the borough is residential, with seemingly endless streets of semi-detached houses spreading out through Hendon and Finchley. The style of most of these houses is overwhelmingly arts and crafts derived, influenced by the Hampstead Garden Suburb homes of Parker and Unwin, in the borough’s south-eastern corner. However, Barnet is also home to a number of interesting modernist buildings, mainly residential and largely built in the 1930s. The garden suburb has a number of moderne houses by the likes of Ernst Freud and Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander. ‘Moderne’ is the name usually given to a style somewhere between the curves of Art Deco and the formalism of Modernism, shorn of the extremes of either style. Apartment buildings are well served too, with the stark Highfield Court, Golders Green by A. V. Pilichowski, and the more approachable Belvedere Court, East Finchley by Ernst Freud. In addition to homes, there are smaller works by masters of concrete like Owen Williams and Ernő Goldfinger. Possibly due to its strong Jewish community, Barnet shows the influence of a number of émigré architects from the 1930s, such as Freud.

As for post-war buildings, the home is still king. There are impressive mid-century houses in Hampstead, Mill Hill and Golders Green, although many hide behind tall hedges and impenetrable fences. Northern Barnet was part of Hertfordshire until 1965, and so is home to a few of the pioneering Hertfordshire County Council schools of post 1945, with two good examples in the East Barnet area. Although not to the same standard as other boroughs, the post-1965 Barnet Borough architects’ department did produce a few worthwhile projects. The biggest was the Grahame Park housing estate in Colindale, designed in collaboration with the Greater London Council and built between 1969 and 1976. Originally designed in a stark brutalist style, the estate was redesigned in the late 1980s, softening many of its harsher edges. The estate is currently being regenerated by the borough, with new blocks being built and the old buildings being demolished. Libraries was an area Barnet also enjoyed some success in, with modernist-influenced libraries in Finchley, Burnt Oak and Edgware. Unfortunately the current council austerity programme means many of these educational buildings are under threat.