Theo Crosby’s houses

Theo Crosby’s house in Hammersmith

A talk by Dr Stephen Parnell

Friday 3rd February, 2023, 1900hrs

At The Gallery EC1, and live streamed

Theo Crosby (1925-94) is today a little known figure, yet from the 1950s to the 1980s his multiple roles within the British cultural scene -as an architect, teacher, graphic designer, sculptor, and writer - was influential. Leaving South Africa in 1948, in rejection of the then new apartheid regime, Crosby settled in London. By 1953 he was technical editor of Architectural Design, and in 1956 was a key figure in putting on the “This is Tomorrow” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, where his collaborators included Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and Alison and Peter Smithson. It was his association with the Smithsons that brought his work and ideas into the orbit of the much contested concept of Brutalism, and its critique of contemporary urban practice. Later in his career he would be one of the founding partners of Pentragram. From the late 1960s he had become vocally critical of large scale planning. This approach led him in the 1980s to become an advisor to Prince Charles on urban design and planning.

This talk will be about Theo Crosby's first two Brutalist houses. It will discuss his relationship with the Smithsons, their ideas about the New Brutalism in the late 1940s and how these were instantiated into Theo's own studio houses - the first in Strand-on-the-Green in 1953, and the second, a stable conversion, in Hammersmith in 1956. The latter continued to develop with several extensions over the years, but maintained its Brutalist ethos and is an exemplary case study of architecture as a 'direct result of a way of life'.

Theo Crosby in 1972

Stephen Parnell is an architect, architectural critic, and historian of post-World War Two architecture. He currently is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Newcastle.

There is wine and cheese for attendees at The Gallery. After the lecture, we will move to a local pub to continue the discussion.