Interwar Industrial Architecture Part Two
Monday’s post on some buildings from our newest mini guide, Interwar Industrial Architecture, got a great reception, so we thought we would oblige with a couple more, this time from north London.
The central areas of London had been home to numerous industrial buildings and factories before the construction of the arterial roads, and many companies opted to remain there. The outer edges of Camden and Islington were home to manufacturing buildings with the most well known and eye-catching being the Carreras Cigarette Factory in Mornington Crescent. It was built from 1926 on a strip of land previously used as a communal garden, a fact that would shape its form; a 550 foot long block that sits between Hampstead Road and Mornington Crescent. Designed by brothers M.E. & O.H. Collins with A.G. Porri, the building is decorated in colourful Egyptian-themed detailing, including repeated black cat reliefs in between the giant papyriform columns and two large cats outside the entrance. All of this decoration is a replacement, with the original being stripped in the 1960s, when it was converted to office use.
Designed in an altogether more serious tone was the modernist Gilbey House (1937), a complex featuring a factory, offices and warehouse, for the gin distilling company on Jamestown Road, Camden Town. Its designers were the impeccably modernist architects Eric Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, working together briefly during Mendelsohn's flight from Germany to the U.S. via Britain. They added an extension to a building from 189, extending the premises with a reinforced concrete structure, engineered by Felix Samuely, which sits on cork insulated foundations, designed to lessen vibrations from the nearby trainline.
Text and photos from our new mini guide, Interwar Industrial Architecture, get your copy here https://modernisminmetroland.bigcartel.com/product/interwar-industrial-architecture-mini-guide