Upper Lawn Solar Pavilion traces the private architectural laboratory that Alison and Peter Smithson built for themselves on the Fonthill Estate in Wiltshire — a modest structure whose quiet experiments in climate, materiality, and daily life fed directly into the scale of their public work.
About This Book
In 1958, Alison and Peter Smithson purchased a derelict cottage on the Fonthill Estate in Wiltshire, transforming it over four years into what they called a simple climate house — two open floors orienting domestic life to the rhythms of weather and season. The result, Upper Lawn or the Solar Pavilion, retained the original stone walls and chimney while introducing innovations that would later surface in projects including Robin Hood Gardens. This publication revisits and expands the small book Alison Smithson made with architect Enric Miralles in 1986, republishing its diary entries, photographs, drawings, and references in full alongside extensive new materials from the Smithson archive. It positions Upper Lawn not as a footnote but as the ethical and philosophical core of a practice.
Key Features
- 144 pages of diary entries, archival photographs, measured drawings, and documentary references republished in a new design alongside expanded archival materials
- Edited by Louis Rogers in collaboration with the Smithson Family Collection; introductory essay by Paul Clarke, Professor of Architectural Design at the Belfast School of Architecture
- Case study: Upper Lawn Solar Pavilion, Fonthill Estate, Wiltshire, with contextual reference to Robin Hood Gardens housing estate
- Published by MACK, 1986
What You'll Discover
- How a single private dwelling functioned as a sustained research project into climate-responsive design and the ethics of material restraint
- The role of inhabitation as architectural documentation — the pavilion read as a ledger of wear, use, and the passage of time
- The direct relationship between the Smithsons' domestic experiments at Upper Lawn and the ambitions of their large-scale public housing work
- How the folly tradition of the English landscape was reinterpreted through a Brutalist lens to produce something simultaneously vernacular and rigorous
About the Author
This publication was edited by Louis Rogers in collaboration with the Smithson Family Collection. The introductory essay is written by Paul Clarke, Professor of Architectural Design at the Belfast School of Architecture. The original 1986 book was created by Alison Smithson together with architect Enric Miralles.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 144
- Dimensions: 300 x 210 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781915743008
- Publisher: MACK
- Publication Date: 1986
Perfect For: Architects and researchers with an interest in Brutalism, postwar British architecture, climate-responsive design, and the relationship between domestic space and professional practice.