Single Aspect's Blog

The publication of a book about floor plans in 2011 gave me cause to study the scissor maisonette.  The combination of a view 180° both ways and the split level nature of the design, provide a living experience that in my opinion is second to none.

This diagram appears in an AJ article dated 28/2/62

This utterly brilliant, innovative, efficient and desirable form of housing has for too long languished in disparate pockets of London, loved only by its architects and residents (sadly not always by them) and barely noticed by developers who don’t appreciate its utility, won’t pay for its construction,  and now prohibited by building regulations (16 10 reasons why not).

Here’s Alex Ely of MAE writing about the book in relation to Corringham, a private scissor block:-

The Corringham scheme, for example, is a model of efficiency through complexity and as much as I would like to emulate the plan, I wouldn’t be able to because of the ever-advancing set of regulations that we face such as the Lifetime Homes Standard, which the scheme doesn’t meet.

Taken from the AJ http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/8612613.article

Alex Ely of MAE has written an excellent review of which the above paragraph is a brief quotation. If you want to learn more about the book visit the website http://www.naipublishers.nl/architecture/dash04_e.html 

“In the early 1960s the LCC introduced a new invention: the scissor section This design made it possible to build extremely compact blocks with a minimum of space dedicated to access. But according to the designers the greatest benefit was the fact that the blocks could be built in any possible position because the relatively small, dual-aspect two-bedroom apartments with their interchangeable living room could be positioned in any required orientation.

The LCC adopted this solution, designed by a team led by David Gregory Jones, in a number of projects in the first half of the 1960s, but it was also used in a commercial development: a housing block in Craven Hill Gardens in the heart of London.”

http://www.naipublishers.nl/architecture/dash04_e.html

I don’t personally approve of the design shown above.  My objection is to the kitchen in a corner without natural light.  The LCC scissor blocks handled this much better by designing a galley kitchen with a window at one end (parallel to the living room) which owing to the height of the blocks and the ceiling height of 8ft or 2.4384m allowed ample daylight even to the far end of the kitchen.

While the LCC may have designed the scissor maisonette in UK form, the idea of overlapping flats originated in Marseilles with the landmark Modernist Unite_d_Habitation by Le Corbusier.  A sketch of one of the flats is shown below:-

Le Corbusier in Marseilles,  Erno Goldfinger at Trellick Tower and Balfron Tower, and the LCC made corridor access flats overlap such that a corridor is only required every other or even every third floor with each flat having a view both ways and them interlocking in a manner that can be difficult at first to grasp without drawings.

While looking up “TAYLOR, Nicholas. The failure of housing. Architectural Review, London, n. 849, p. 341-359, Nov. 1967″ at the RIBA library I came across an article about the Pepys Estate on page 376 of the same volume which includes this quote about the flats.

The ‘scissors’ maisonette is technically an interesting invention; it was devised for the LCC by David Gregory-Jones and Colin Jones and this is its first large-scale use.  It enables more people to be packed together with less circulation space, and a more flexible layout is possible with all the living-rooms on one side. But against this must be set the repetitiousness of row upon row of identical windows on every floor, enveloped in dark plum-coloured brick, used for all wall surfaces, except for the precast units of the tower blocks. [my emphasis - Ed.]

p.376 Architectural Review 1967.

Yes, they’ve got internal bathrooms and toilets, something I complain bitterly about elsewhere in this blog.  But the kitchen is a separate room, and is well lit.   Light floods into the properties on both sides making lack of daylight in the bathroom and toilet a small price to pay for the benefits.  The flats are properly dual aspect, something entirely missing in too many of today’s pathetic developments; and they are functional.

The bathroom and toilet are separate, and halfway between the living room / kitchen and bedrooms, with dividing doors between on the split level landings.  The use of an access corridor every other level reduces the number of  common areas that have been the cause of so much complaint by Alice Coleman among others, and their compact size means that they are suitable for any plot, even where space is limited.

An example of scissor maisonettes is given here from the excellent British History on line website:-

To the riverside, Kelson House is a 25-storey block of maisonettes, faced in aggregate-concrete panels (Plate 136d). It is of the ‘scissors’ type developed in the early 1960s by a team in the LCC Architect’s Department, headed by David Gregory-Jones, Colin Jones and Ian Hampson.

The LCC designed Aragon, Daubeney and Eddystone Towers on the Pepys Estate Deptford, Kelson House on the Samuda Estate Isle of Dogs (Burnet, Tait & Partners), Braithwaite House (more photos here) on Bunhill Row EC1,and Maydew House on Abbeyfield Road SE16, with internal bathrooms and toilets because as scissor flats they more than made up for this by having such excellent daylight in the bedrooms, kitchen and living rooms and dual aspect to boot.

Maydew House links:-

http://cllrpeterjohn.blogspot.com/2010/08/maydew-house.html

http://cllrpeterjohn.blogspot.com/2010/02/80-days-to-save-maydew-house.html

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ihstory.aspx?storycode=6511105

Residents to move from Southwark block

12 August 2010 | By Carl Brown

UPDATE: Thanks to this visitor:-

A visitor from host86-145-222-84.range86-145.btcentralplus.com (86.145.222.84) arrived from www.google.co.uk/url?
[edit] http://www.singleaspect.org.uk
[edit]=westside scissor flats
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=15
at 19:36:17 on Sunday, May 22, 2011.

for alerting me to these scissor flats and this website:-

http://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/mp/p150/page165.htm

http://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/mp/p150/page166.htm

UPDATE: 7/5/12 I found this today while researching Packington Square.

The Six-storey Packington Blocks are an interesting development of the Scissors flats which were designed by Colin and Jennifer Jones. I have written about them in the Growth of Muswell Hill, p 170-5.

Scissors flats, which were built privately in Fortis Green, Muswell Hill, and later by the L.C.C. all over London, are economical to build. Most flats are built as floors, but in Scissors Flat,s two layers of flats have only one access corridor, which saves a lot of money. Front doors are side by side, but one door leads up a half-floor to one flat and the next leads down a half-floor to the second. The flats are wrapped round each other, rather like the arrangement of a Victorian Bye-law house. There are examples of L.C.C. scissors flats in Malden Road, Camden, Penfold Street, Marylebone, and many other districts.

In a street of three-storey houses, all three floors can be reached from street level by internal staircases.

The six-storey Packington Estate blocks are like two rows of three-storey houses, one on top of the other. There are one bedroom flats, two bedroom flats, and three-bedroom houses, all with front doors side by side at ground level; and at fourth-floor level. Only two access levels are needed for six floors of dwellings, which is an even more economical way of building than scissors flats.

http://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/islington/packington/index.htm

Here’s Nick Cohen writing in the Observer about the same estate and its “regeneration”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/mar/20/communities.architecture

Here’s Patrick Butler writing in the Guardian about the regeneration of Packington.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/04/london-homes-rich-poor-communities

and Lynsey Hanley writing on the same day about the same estate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/04/packington-redevelopment-london-social-housing

Yet again this time from the Estates Gazette

http://www.estatesgazette.com/blogs/london-residential-research/2012/12/packington-estate-n1-social-ho.html

Lastly here’s my Flickr set on Scissor Maisonettes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/singleaspect/collections/72157627592908032/