The Open University
Yorkshire Region

Cultural Studies Research Forum
Reports and Abstracts 1995 -2000

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Aspects of art and architecture in 1950s Huddersfield

Robert Hall

Having been involved in the construction of Farnley Hey - the most advanced example of modern domestic architecture in post-war England - Huddersfield builder Peter Stead continued to develop his interest in contemporary art and design, opening the Symon Quinn Gallery in 1954, exhibiting works by St. Ives based artists including Heath, Heron, Lanyon, Hilton and Frost. His collaboration with Cobra painter/sculptor Stephen Gilbert resulted in constructions and designs for the modernist houses - House Neovision and the Y House. These unrealised projects were informed both by Gilbert's practice as an artist and by Steads increasing interest in the theories of Mondrian, as expressed in such writings as The Home - The Street - The City (1927).

From 1957 Stead collaborated with writer, critic and later architect and urban designer, David Lewis resulting in two houses at Almondbury near Huddersfield designed and built between 1957 - 1963 and embodying many of Steads ideas about functionalism in form and design, as well as lectures, articles and design projects. Their work focused on how a new approach to the design and construction of housing could contribute to the solution of community and environmental problems. Both men were involved in the development of the discipline of Urban Design in the USA in the 1960s.

The importance of this example of a provincial avant-garde lies in the circumstances of Stead's collaboration with a range of creative individuals and the enduring social of nature of patronage in the visual arts.