Summary
Private detached house, built 1998-9 to designs by John Outram Associates.
Reasons for Designation
Sphinx Hill, including its programme of hard landscape features, 1998-9 by John Outram Associates, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as a tour-de-force of domestic Post-Modernism; a creative and boldly rendered work whose design, decoration and planning is layered with historical and symbolic references;
* as a comprehensive architectural ensemble which includes a decorative scheme of interior design and linked programme of hard landscaping;
* for the rigour, consistency and quality of its architectural detailing, including bespoke interior fittings and rich polychromy;
* as a rare and individualistic late-C20 contribution to the Egyptian revival tradition.
Historic interest:
* as one of a small number of realised works in this country by John Outram Associates, encapsulating key themes in the work of this singular practice;
* as the product of a well-matched collaboration between an Egyptophile client and a practice drawing upon the architecture of ancient civilisations.
History
Sphinx Hill (designed 1994 onwards, built 1998-9) was designed by John Outram Associates (JOA) for Henrietta McCall, an Egyptologist, and her husband Christopher.
As prospective clients, the McCalls not only wanted a house that would reflect their shared interest in ancient Egypt, but they were also committed to commissioning a work of modern architecture which would withstand the test of time. Both were admirers of JOA’s first domestic work, The New House, Wadhurst, East Sussex of 1982-86 (Grade I), a country house for the Tetrapak millionaire Hans Rausing and his wife Märit, as well as the practice’s much published Isle of Dogs Pumping Station of 1986-88 (Grade II*), a civic work serving the new development in London’s Docklands. The McCalls approached John Outram about taking on their own, more modestly scaled, project. He accepted the commission and so began a successful architect/client collaboration.
The McCalls needed a plot which was within commutable distance of London and, ideally, situated by a river to compliment the Egyptianate theme. After a difficult search a site was found on the banks of the Thames at Moulsford, occupied by an existing 1960s house. The McCall’s brief was kept flexible. A series of sketch proposals show the evolution of Outram’s design, with early iterations reflecting the influence of the early-C19 Egyptian revival. However, these gave way to a more personal, Outramesque, interpretation, the concept was then further refined in collaboration with the clients. The project team included Anthony Charnley, as project architect, Jean Murphy and Simon Hurst, as well as Outram himself. When submitted to the planners, Outram made the case that the theatrical riverside setting of the site demanded a different character of building. The argument, and the design, was accepted and the plans were approved.
The resulting house clearly stands within the Egyptian revival tradition but is also, unmistakably, the work of JOA. The segmental curves of the roof line are familiar from the practice’s warehouses at Poyle for McKay Securities Group of 1976-1978 (Grade II) and The New House. At Sphinx Hill, they reference the barrel-vaulted chapels at the funerary complex of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt. The architecture combines bold modelling and flat, articulated, planes of colour, and is realised through a creative use of standard construction products and techniques as well as bespoke components. The commission extended to the hard landscape around the house, the garden design and to a full decorative scheme for the interior.
The interior paint scheme was devised by Jean Murphy in collaboration with Outram. Outram envisioned that the barrel vaulted ceiling of the first-floor drawing room would be richly decorated in the manner he proposed for the Judge Business School, Cambridge, 1993-95 (listed Grade II*) and which was realised at Duncan Hall, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA, 1995-97. However, as at the Judge, the client declined to see the concept realised so the ceiling remained unpainted and was left in the mottled earthy-pink tones of the plaster finish.
The house has iconographic narratives familiar to JOA. It is planned on a tartan grid, recalling, in Outram’s vision, the imagery of ancient hypostyle halls and his concept of the ‘empire of the forest’, an eternal grove of trees. The garden landscape, designed to frame views between the house and river, expresses Outram’s vision of the ‘republic of the valley’: the course of a river from its source to its delta and mouth. The architectural elements of the garden were by JOA, whereas the planting scheme was devised by Robert Holden in consultation with the architect and client.
The house makes explicit and scholarly references to architectural history alongside the more idiosyncratic aspects of its iconography. Familiar motifs such as sphinxes, pyramids, scarabs and hieroglyphs are used alongside references to Owen Jones and his seminal design source book, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856. The use of through-coloured render on the building’s exterior is consistent with the practice’s philosophical approach to materials. JOA favoured materials in which the colour ran all the way through, linking to the idea of constructional polychromy, revived in the C19 writings of John Ruskin and Jones. The building’s planning demonstrates the direct influence of Palladianism in its tripartite arrangement, stair position and strong organisational axes.
John Outram (1934- ) was born in Taiping, Malasia. Studying architecture at Regent’s Street Polytechnic and the Architectural Association in 1955-1960, his architectural education was rooted in modernist thinking. However, subsequently working for the London County Council and then in private practice for Fitzroy Robinson and Louis de Soissons, he gradually became disillusioned with modernism. He began to study traditional buildings, classicism and ancient mythology, assembling a collection of antiquarian books and travelling to the Mediterranean. He set up his own practice, John Outram Associates, in 1973 and had designed only two interiors before being offered the job of designing the warehouses at Poyle, their first realised project. Sphinx Hill is one of only two private houses designed by the practice.
Outram’s architectural language defies anything other than the broadest stylistic classification. Nevertheless, he is often referred to as a Post-Modernist, although he dislikes the term. Post-Modernism was a movement and style prevalent in architecture between about 1975 and 1990, defined in terms of its relationship with modern architecture and characterised by its plurality, engagement with urban context and setting, reference to older architectural traditions and use of metaphor and symbolism. It accepts the technology of industrialised society but expresses it in more diverse ways than the machine imagery of the contemporary High-Tech style. Separate but parallel American and European strands of Post-Modernism converged in England in the late 1970s to produce works by architects of international significance, and distinctive voices unique to Britain such as Outram.
Details
House, 1998-9 by John Outram Associates, project architect, Anthony Charnley.
MATERIALS: blockwork construction faced in through-coloured render. The roof and gutters are of copper. Windows are aluminium and timber.
PLAN: the building is situated on the west bank of the Thames as it runs through the village of Moulsford, the entrance front is to the west and garden front to the east, overlooking the river. This orientation, and its relationship to the rising and setting sun, is referenced in the architecture of the house.
It has two storeys with the main accommodation contained within a rectangular footprint. The plan is arranged on a tartan grid with a 1.5m module. In Outram’s iconography this recalls ancient hypostyle halls, and while the columns are largely absent, the grid is marked within the house through various devices. Outside, it extends to the paving pattern to front and rear and beyond into the garden landscape.
The floor-plan shows the influence of Palladian planning in its tripartite arrangement, strong axes and stair position. There is a short, central axis running front to back, and a long cross-axis connecting the three bays north to south. The central bay is occupied by the entrance hall and stair, opening through double doors to a reception room on the garden front. The north bay contains a garage and kitchen, the latter extending out into a single storey flat-roofed wing to the north. The south bay contains two studies. Adjoining to the south is a single-storey swimming pool wing set back from the front elevation.
A U-plan stair rises from the entrance hall in a partially enclosed, top-lit well. The stair lands within the first-floor drawing room which, with the stair, occupies the full depth of the middle bay. To the north are bedrooms and a bathroom and to the south the master bedroom, bathroom, dressing room and doors to a first-floor terrace on the roof of the swimming pool.
EXTERIOR: the exterior is characterised by a bold formal arrangement of segmental roofs with elevations enriched by flat planes of through-coloured render, blue engineering brickwork and patterned tiles, separated by shadow gaps. A key view of the house is from the river, and the Thames path which runs alongside it, from where the integrated theme of house and garden can be appreciated.
The architecture uses a coded, symbolic language to express its iconographic narrative. The entrance front is a symmetrical arrangement of three bays, articulated by four broad pilasters carrying three overlapping, segmentally curved roofs with cyma recta modillions and oversize cyma recta gutters. The shafts of the pilasters are of sand-coloured render, the bases tiled in a tartan pattern reflecting the grid on which the house is planned. The tiles are of black, burgundy, ochre and turquoise, based on a detail from the vividly painted coffin of Djehutynakht at the Deir el-Bersha necropolis. The capitals are of black render, with a deep central V which clasps a terracotta coloured circle. The capitals represent akhet, the hieroglyph symbolising the sun emerging over the horizon, but can also be read as beams clasped by posts. The circles are set against a blue segmental frieze which follows the curve of the eaves and suggests the arc that the sun traces through the sky.
Between the pilasters are single ground- and first-floor openings with full-width segmental transom lights. Windows with dark green frames and dark stained timber side panels are framed by chunky half-round mouldings in light ochre. The contrast of the light mouldings against the dark openings suggests the presence large voids behind simple post and rail screens. Spandrel panels of willow green render bear terracotta-coloured winged sun motifs.
The central entrance is recessed, with a pair of painted, planked outer doors which open inwards to reveal a second flush panel door. The entrance is framed by engaged drum-like columns of blue engineering brick and bands of black and red render. To the left is the garage door, a coloured tartan pattern of vertically and horizontally planked timber.
The garden front is wider, taking in the single-storey bays of the swimming pool and kitchen wings to either side of the principal arrangement. The glazing is more extensive, but the language of colour, form and detail continues from the entrance front. In the tradition of grand riverside houses of the past, this elevation is designed to be viewed from the thoroughfare of the river and the Thames path; the eye is drawn to the house through the formalised landscape approach.
INTERIOR: the aesthetic themes and architectural devices of the exterior continue within, including a rich colour palette which references Owen Jones’s studies of Egyptian design in his seminal design source book, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856. There are bespoke details throughout, including cyma-recta profiled wall lamps, designed by Outram, and bronze scarab beetle doorknobs by Jean Murphy. Doors are flush-panelled timber. Built-in furniture continues the gridded aesthetic found elsewhere. Half round mouldings frame the window openings and house roller blinds. The palette of materials includes wood, stone and painted plaster. Paint is applied using various methods and tonal layering to create patination and other surface effects.
The hypostyle is expressed through the spatial organisation of rooms, and more literally through the pattern of floor coverings, wall panels separated by shadow gaps, and the manifestation of square columns and pilasters with palm leaf capitals. The design of the capitals is taken from Jones’s study of those found on the Portico of Edfu. They are cast in plaster and silvered or gilded with metal paint and lacquered.
The building’s theme extends to almost every part of its interior. However, there is a hierarchy of interest, with the greatest decorative elaboration focussed in the principal spaces. Built-in furniture is divided between timber construction, as found in the ground-floor studies, for example, and more modest fibreboard construction.
A key space is the first-floor drawing room. Here the colour scheme is at its most vibrant, bringing together deep blue, red, verdigris and yellow. The room is dual aspect with a barrel-vaulted ceiling between screens of paired columns and pilasters to east and west. Above each screen is an oculus in the segmental gable end. Two free-standing columns with integrated uplighters take their position on the grid of the hypostyle, mapped in the polished parquet floor. These columns are a manifestation of Outram’s ‘columnae lucis’, or columns of light. Towards the centre of the room is a free-standing hearth in the form of an open-sided pyramid; smoke is drawn underneath the floor to a hidden flue.
Beneath the drawing room is a second, groin-vaulted, reception room with built-in display shelves. The pool house is also groin-vaulted: two bays of vaulting are supported on parallel arcades of blue marbled columns. The vaults are formed of a taut, shiny, blue plastic membrane, known as Barrisol.
Stained glass featuring Egyptian themed imagery in some of the east and south-facing segmental transom lights are by Joseph Nuttgens and date to 2012.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES (not mapped)
The tartan grid of the hypostyle is marked in the brick, concrete and tarmac paving which surrounds the house. To the rear this provides a garden terrace which connects out into the formal hard landscape of the garden, visually linking the house to the river.
Iconographically, the landscape design relates to what Outram termed the ‘republic of the valley’: the course of a river system from its source in the mountains to its delta and mouth. On the main axis of the house, water rises up into a square infinity fountain, from where it fills a concrete rill and cascades through three pools, representing the cataracts of the Nile, each fall guarded by pairs of sphinxes. The feature terminates in a square pool surrounded by another gridded terrace towards the end of the garden. Beneath the terrace is a retaining wall of blue engineering bricks. The land below, adjacent to the river, acts as a flood plain. The retaining wall has central arched drainage outlet, corner piers and semi-circular recesses cut back to either end; the overall effect from the river is suggestive of a city wall.
