Genesta Road
London SE18
Architect: Berthold Lubetkin
Register for similar homesA unique opportunity to purchase one of the most important Modern Movement buildings in Britain. This mid-terrace house is one of a group of four on Genesta Road designed by the renowned architect Berthold Lubetkin in the early 1930s. The quartet of houses have the rare distinction of being listed Grade II* in recognition of their architectural significance. The house has recently undergone a full refurbishment.
Internal accommodation measures approximately 1,350sq ft (128 sq m), and comprises five bedrooms and a bathroom, a reception room and kitchen, a utility room and integral garage. There is off-street parking at the front and a long stepped garden at the rear. The house has fine views over London to the north from the upper rooms.
The house has been sympathetically refurbished by the current owner and is offered in excellent condition. It has many of the features one would expect from an early Modernist house, both inside and out, including a sweeping spiral staircase, Crittall windows, white render and Lubetkin’s signature curved balcony.
Genesta Road is a long, primarily residential street. This house is located towards the brow of the hill, opposite the school. Shrewsbury Park, Plumstead Common and Shooters Hill golf course are close at hand. Woolwich Arsenal DLR station is approximately three-quarters of a mile away, which runs services to Bank.
With thanks to www.room-606.com who supplied furniture for the photography
Please note that all areas, measurements and distances given in these particulars are approximate and rounded. The text, photographs and floor plans are for general guidance only. The Modern House has not tested any services, appliances or specific fittings — prospective purchasers are advised to inspect the property themselves. All fixtures, fittings and furniture not specifically itemised within these particulars are deemed removable by the vendor.
History
The four houses on Genesta Road were built in 1933-34 to designs by Berthold Lubetkin in conjunction with AV Pilichowski. Although not as well known as his collaborator, Pilichowski carried out significant solo work elsewhere, now either destroyed (Whittinghame College, Brighton, 1933) or altered (Highfield Court in Golders Green, London, 1935).
Lubetkin is among the most important figures of the Modern Movement in Britain. Born in Georgia in 1901, he studied in Berlin and Paris, before moving to London in 1931. The following year he founded the famous Tecton practice with the Architectural Association graduates Anthony Chitty, Lindsay Drake, Michael Dugdale, Valentine Harding, Godfrey Samuel and Francis Skinner.
Lubetkin and Tecton’s buildings are arguably the most iconic of the period, and include the penguin pool at London Zoo (designed in conjunction with the engineer Ove Arup), Finsbury Health Centre and the Highpoint flats in Highgate. In fact, the houses on Genesta Road are something of a precursor to Highpoint, particularly the balconies with their “cyma” double-curved fronts.
In his book Modern: The Modern Movement in Britain, Alan Powers wrote of the Genesta Road project, “Ranged along a suburban street, these houses have distant views to the north, far over the Thames estuary. They were among the first attempts to redesign the traditional English terrace house with the benefits of concrete construction, and the plans and spatial arrangements have many graceful points, chiefly resulting from the compact spiral stair in the centre of each house.”
In an article about the houses in the Telegraph, Matthew Sturgis wrote: “Lubetkin preserved the existing line and scale of the street, but otherwise employed the standard modernist palette, working in reinforced concrete, using steel-framed casement windows and giving the houses flat roofs. The simplicity of his design was praised at the time as ‘avoiding the usual pitfall’ of the speculative builder who would break up the unity of a street with ‘a lot of competitive and irrelevant centres of interest’. The clean, clear lines of the windows and the white paint of the exterior finishing make for a harmonious whole. A touch of fantasy is added by the undulating balconies.
“The site was awkward, with the ground sloping down from the roadside at a very steep gradient. The neighbouring houses had addressed the problem by having steps leading up to a front door on a ‘raised ground floor’, relegating the real ground floor to near-basement status. But Lubetkin adopted the more ingenious plan of making the entrance on the ground floor and having a spiral staircase leading up to the living-room, which could then run uninterrupted across the entire width of the first-floor front. The three bedrooms and the bathroom were on the second floor, with the smallest bedroom benefiting from the tall window giving out on to the ornamental balcony.”
