KINGSLEY COURT

List Entry Summary

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

Location

KINGSLEY COURT, PARK AVENUE NORTH NW2

The building may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

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List entry Description

Summary of Building

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Reasons for Designation

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History

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Details

935/0/10065 PARK AVENUE NORTH NW2 24-NOV-00 Willesden Kingsley Court

II



Block of 54 flats. 1933-4 by Peter Caspari for Davis Estates. Banded rendered brick and rendered elevations with concrete floors and flat roof. Curved, organic `Z'-shaped plan on acute angled site. Six storeys. Metal windows, those to the principal rooms with margin lights and strong horizontal banded glazing bars between projecting concrete lintels and sills which emphasise the horizontal, linear quality of the composition. Two entrances, one serving Park Avenue North wing of the `Z', the other that with an additional frontage on Chapter Road. The Park Avenue North entrance is at the widest point of the block, under curved concrete canopy and with a long access gallery to the side between brick balustrades and banded corner brick pilasters. That to Chapter Road has a convex clerestory over, with rendered bands between the lines of glazing, and set-back staircase behind. Courtyard elevation to rear of unbanded brick. Interiors not inspected.

This is one of the first blocks of flats in an expressionist style in England, and the first work here by Peter Caspari, a former assistant of Erich Mendelsohn and like him a refugee here in 1933. The banded horizontals and use of curves is more sophisticated than that by any comparable British architect and shows the influence of Mendelsohn. This is the most eloquent of Caspari's blocks of flats, and one of his few English works; after the Second World War he emigrated to Canada.

Source Charlotte Benton, A Different World, Emigré Architects in Britain 1928-1958, London, RIBA 1995, p.147

Selected Sources

Books and journals
Benton, C, 'Emigre Architects in Britain' in A Different World: Emigre Architects in Britain 1928-1958, (1995), 147

National Grid Reference: TQ 22931 84929

Map

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