![]() It is a simple design with none of the acrobatics used by some of Lucas’s contemporaries such as Oliver Hill and, unusually for a Modernist house, it was executed in reinforced concrete. If you discount the extension to one side, it has the proportions of a classical villa, split into three sections with two solid walls framing a lighter central (completely glazed) section with, again, the glazed upper storey. ![]() ![]() Round the back it looks rather different, more substantial and much more symmetrical. It is an effect amplified by what appears to be a lightweight upper storey, almost fully glazed, so that the building gets lighter as it rises and the projecting eaves seem to be floating. Viewed from the road, with that prominent projecting glazed stair, there is something a little LA about the house. The home’s front has a projecting glazed stair “You can see almost 30 miles over the countryside,” he says all the way to the Chiltern Hills in the distance. Munro admits to initially not knowing much about its Modernist heritage, or Modernist architecture at all for that matter, “but there was tremendous competition to buy it” because of the incredible view. “Margaret Sewell’s daughter, Phillada Sewell, lived here until she was 90.” Phillada, an actress known for appearing in film and television period dramas, “had done very little to the house apart from maintaining it but it had sat empty for two years after her death”, he adds. ![]() “We’re only the second owners of the house since it was commissioned ,” says Munro. Grade II-listed, the Flat Roofed House has been meticulously restored for modern living. The property has been luckier than its closest Modernist neighbour, another house by Lucas, the Grade II*-listed Noah’s Boathouse which, according to Chris Munro, owner of the Flat Roofed House, once suffered the indignity of having a thatched roof imposed on it, surely the ultimate insult to minimal white modernity. The Flat Roofed House near Henley, designed by British Modernist architect Colin Lucas It was designed for Margaret Sewell, an artist widowed in the first world war, according to the current owner. With a flat roof and projecting eaves, it looks more Belgian or Dutch than English, even, perhaps, with a little influence from Frank Lloyd Wright. Flat Roofed House is a striking white home characterised by a glazed staircase, which climbs conspicuously up its side. One of Lucas’s houses, an elegant villa in Little Frieth, Buckinghamshire, near Henley, has recently come on the market for £2.25m. But Colin Lucas, who joined Connell and Ward to establish one of Britain’s most successful avant garde practices between the wars, was a rare homegrown Modernist. Think of the big names - Berthold Lubetkin, Ernö Goldfinger, Wells Coates, Serge Chermayeff, Raymond McGrath - as well as those who only stayed briefly - Erich Mendelsohn, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius: all were born elsewhere. Like most of the first wave of Modernist architects in Britain, Amyas Connell and Basil Ward were not British. Remarkable Buckinghamshire house by one of the most influential British architects of the era combines comfort with original character one year ago United Kingdom The Modernist masterpiece meticulously restored for contemporary living
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