Welcome to Corringham

Plans

In the summer of 1960, the freeholder of the land and property at 13-16 Craven Hill Gardens, Ms Wimbush, decided to demolish the 19th-century Uffington Hotel at that location and to replace it with "48 high-class residential maisonettes". She employed property developer Hector Properties Investments and architects' firm Douglas Stephen & Partners, with Kenneth Frampton as the "job architect". Douglas Stephen trusted the young Frampton enough to give him almost complete control over the design process, which allowed Frampton to realise his vision without significant compromises. His final design also included several more apartments than initial drafts, a benefit that was much appreciated by Ms Wimbush.

First plan

The first design was completed on 11 November 1960 and approved by the London County Council on 14 November 1960. Frampton suggested a building consisting of 45 apartments in total. There were 39 maisonettes arranged over six floors, with three additional one-bedroom flats on the lower-ground level above the basement car park and three one-bedroom penthouse flats. Each of the six middle floors was designed with four two-storey maisonettes at the rear and three at the front of the building. The remaining space at the front was occupied by the lift and stairwell, thus sacrificing space where three more maisonettes could have been realised. To access the apartments on the six middle floors, only three double-height access corridors were required. With this design, Frampton realised 29 two-bedroom flats and 16 one-bedroom flats. Balconies were planned at the front and rear of the building for all apartments.

However, Hector Properties Investments insisted on a total of 48 maisonettes, while Westminster Council required that the volume of the new block should correspond to that of the previous buildings on the site.

Second plan

Frampton prepared new drawings, which were presented on 15 March 1961. The idea of splitting each apartment over two floors was not changed, but the maisonettes were no longer arranged on either side of the access corridors. Instead, each flat had a living room and kitchen at the front of the building and one or two bedrooms at the rear. As the cross-section of this design shows, the apartments were now either up-going or down-going from one side of the block to the other. They were carefully arranged to interlock with each other following the so-called scissor section devised by London County Council's architects in the 1950s. As a result, Frampton was able to replace the double-height access corridors he had originally designed with single-height corridors. The volume thus gained was used to realise three more maisonettes in the block without increasing its outer dimensions. Also, the residents of down-going maisonettes could look straight through the building and into the garden – as the cross-section diagram illustrates.

The one-bedroom maisonettes were slightly smaller than the two-bedroom apartments. Frampton arranged the various flats over the eight floors of the building to achieve a lively silhouette with alternating smaller and larger balconies at the front and at the rear.

In this design only four access corridors sufficed to service all 48 flats. The price for such efficiency was that the apartments with living rooms on the top floor had a slightly awkward layout. Their front doors were planned on the fourth access corridor. From the front door, a flight of stairs led toward the bedroom at the rear of the building. Two further flights of stairs, leading past the bathroom and WC, led to the top floor living room.

Modified second plan

To allow for more elegant access to the top floor apartments, Frampton proposed a modified design with a fifth access corridor on the roof. In this plan the balconies of the one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments were aligned so that the front and the rear of the building were completely flat. Also, the modified design shows much healthier-looking trees in the garden!

London County Council approved Frampton's second plan and its modified version on 9 June 1961.

Third plan

Further alterations to the design of the building were submitted to the London County Council on 24 April 1961. Unfortunately, the plans are somewhat ambiguous to the non-architecturally trained.

The balconies at the front of the building were removed, presumably to allow for larger living rooms. There were one-bedroom apartments on the lower three floors. From the silhouette of the building, it would seem that the top three floors, designed narrower at the rear, also consisted of one-bedroom maisonettes – leaving only twelve two-bedroom apartments, on the fourth and fifth floors, out of the total 48. However, thin pencil marks on the drawings suggest extending terraces on the top three floors – and these extending terraces are confusingly marked "bedrooms" in the architect's annotations.

Presumably, the architect tried out various options for the number of one-bedroom apartments and for their placement within the building.

Third plan: cross section

© Douglas Stephen & Partners
 

Fourth and final plan

The final design for the building was submitted to London County Council on 25 January 1962 and approved on 18 June that year. The drawings for this design were unfortunately not available to copy, so they have been reconstructed from Frampton's third design instead.

In the final plan, all 18 one-bedroom flats are located on the bottom three floors. The concrete walls of their terraces are opened up, which makes the building narrower at the bottom. The resulting "overhang" at the rear of the building visibly provides the extra space needed to realise the second bedrooms in the 30 two-bedroom maisonettes on the five top floors – following the modernist idea that "form follows function".

Final plan: cross section

© Douglas Stephen & Partners
 

Construction

Douglas Stephen and Partners not only entrusted Frampton with the design of Corringham but also with the supervision of its construction through to completion. The construction team consisted of:

Quantity surveyors
     Lionel Simmons & Partners,
Structural consultants
     R. J. Crocker & Associates,
Heating consultants
     Weatherfoil Ltd Services,
General consultants
     Matthew Hall Ltd

John Miller, Frampton's friend and colleague at the time, remembers, "The drawings that Ken provided for the contractors were unusual. Instead of showing floor plans of each maisonette type independently, the floor levels, building sections, and elevations were drawn in their entirety and in great detail, even down to floor tiling. In a sense, they were a description of the completed building – an analogue of the building to be rather than instructions to a contractor for its construction".

The consequence was, again in Jon Miller's words, that "for a builder, before the dividing partitions are in, equal half levels meant there was always some doubt about where an apartment might end or begin. Ken’s design certainly challenged the contractors. I remember the foreman, faced with these immaculate drawings, shaking his head and remarking, 'That young Kenny…' – well, you can imagine the words that might have followed".

The entrance canopy was added in 1964 after completion of the rest of the building.

Corringham, London W2 3EH