Fenlands case study - architect Jonathan Ellis-Miller's design for a new studio for painter Mary Banham in the Cambridgeshire Fenlands, England

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 1998 by Neil Jackson

Jonathan Ellis-Miller's new studio for Mary Banham in the Cambridgeshire Fenlands demonstrates a sleek, tectonic honesty allied to an environmental responsiveness.

Mary Banham paints large canvases, six feet square, in bold acrylics. Her new studio house, designed by Jonathan Ellis-Miller and set beside his own earlier studio house (1991) in Prickwillow, Cambridgeshire, is bright and airy; a bold steel structure floating above the Fenlands with expansive views to Ely Cathedral and a large redundant sugar beet factory. Ellis-Miller's own studio house was a homage to the lightweight Case Study Houses of Raphael Soriano and Craig Ellwood and the new building alludes to the heavier houses of Pierre Koenig and the later, more mature Miesian work of Ellwood. These were the buildings which for Reyner Banham, writing in Los Angeles, the Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), conjured up 'the style that nearly...'.

But to say that the Banham studio house is referential to the Californian tradition alone would be to misunderstand it. For in the last 50 years since the Eames House in California (1949), Mies' Farnsworth House in Illinois (1951), and Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut (1949), the domestic application of both light and heavyweight steelwork has been exploited by many British architects. The modern steel house has evolved into a particularly British tradition.

Mary Banham had been looking for a studio near Cambridge, where her daughter lived, but had not really considered building. However, the Fenlands were accessible to London, she loved the fiat landscape and the light was excellent. And there was, as it happened, a vacant plot next to the Ellis-Miller house.

Yet Jonathan Ellis-Miller did not want to replicate his own house. It was a young man's house, designed soon after he left Liverpool University and while he was working with John Winter, and it was consequently cautious and also a little self-conscious. The Banham house demonstrates a maturity gained through 10 years of practice. It is set on a 4m square grid, and is raised off the ground to a roof height of 4m, with 3m ceilings internally. Compared with the 2.3m roof height of its neighbour, it appears very large. The bolted steelwork is bold, the cantilevers are deep and the scale is considerably inflated. But the houses are turned at right angles to each other anti kept as far apart as the site will allow, thus reducing the contrast. Moreover, the application of a cantilevered steel access deck, overhead louvres and broad, Venetian blinds to the exterior of the Banham House serves to emphasize the horizontal and give the building the appearance of hovering, Farnsworth-like, over its site. At night, downlights set under the floor make this seem a reality.

The differences between the houses are not just in their scale and in how the materials are handled, but also in their respective programmes. Whereas the earlier house (arranged as small, cellular spaces), lacked thermal mass and employed external blinds to exclude the sun, the new building welcomes it. Passive solar gain is used to warm the broad concrete floor and a 12 sq m bank of Braithewaite tanks (a reference to the Smithsons at nearby Hunstanton), which serve as a Trombe wall. Although essentially open-plan around a kitchen/bathroom core, the internal space can be subdivided by full-height, insulated screen walls which swing open to form a snug around the fireplace and to release the heat from the tanked wall behind. Steel is now being recognized as a green material, but its use, especially in conjunction with walls of glass, needs to be informed if the environmental benefits of the material are not to be negated. With heating bills calculated at less than [pounds]50 per annum, and an eight-year capacity to the domestic oil tank, this is surely a responsible house.

For all its Miesian referencing, the Banham House displays its tectonics honestly. Of Mary Banham, Ellis-Miller observed that 'she brought an amazing sense of confidence', and this is apparent in the building.

Architect

Jonathan Ellis-Miller, Cambridge

Photographs

Peter Cook/VIEW