Amyas Connell was born in Taranaki, New Zealand on 23 June 1901. A pioneering modernist architect, he trained in New Zealand before studying at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and winning the Rome Prize. His design for 'High and Over' at Amersham became a landmark of British International Style architecture. With Basil Ward and Colin Lucas, he helped advance experimental concrete domestic design in interwar Britain, later working in East Africa and Kenya. Amyas Connell died in London, England on 19 April 1980.
Architect Amyas Connell was born in Taranaki, New Zealand on 23 June 1901. He began his architectural training in 1919 as an apprentice in the Wellington office of architect Stanley W. Fearn. There he met Basil Ward, later his close collaborator, and in 1924 the two travelled to England, where they studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, until 1926. Although trained within Beaux-Arts conventions, Connell and Ward were already looking towards the European avant-garde; in 1925 they visited Paris, seeing Le Corbusier’s Esprit Nouveau Pavilion and seeking out publications on modern architecture.
In 1926 Connell won the Rome Prize in Architecture. At the British School at Rome, where he enrolled in 1927, he undertook restoration studies, including a project on the Villa of Tiberius on Capri. His time there also proved decisive professionally: the school’s director, Sir Bernard Ashmole, became both friend and client. In 1929 Ashmole commissioned Connell to design his house, 'High and Over' at Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and Connell left Rome early to undertake the project. Completed in 1930, 'High and Over' was Connell’s first major building and remains his best-known work. With its concrete frame, Y-shaped plan, flat roofs, strip windows, roof terraces, glazed stair and dramatic hexagonal hall, it was designed to capture sunlight and views over the Misbourne valley, while combining modern construction with domestic practicality. In 1931, soon after the house was completed, British Pathé featured it in a short film titled The House of a Dream. Historic England later described 'High and Over' as ‘the first truly convincing essay in the international style in England’; it was also one of only two British buildings included in the 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition The International Style in New York. Connell's other early works included the Vitamin Café interior in London (1931) and New Farm at Haslemere (1932).
In 1930 Connell and Ward established a partnership, developing an experimental domestic modernism based on reinforced concrete, flat roofs, large areas of glazing, open interiors and careful orientation to light and air. Their use of concrete, including thin monolithic wall construction, was technologically adventurous in Britain and often contentious (Thistlewood and Heeley, 1997). Their speculative houses at Park Avenue, Ruislip, designed with the contractors Walter Taylor Ltd, provoked planning objections, hostile professional review and press attention (Paul Mellon Centre). The resulting ‘Ruislip case’ exposed official and professional resistance to concrete houses. In 1934 the practice became Connell, Ward and Lucas when Colin Lucas, a Cambridge-trained architect and builder, with his own experience of reinforced concrete, joined the firm. The partnership lasted only until 1939, but in five years it produced more than 20 private houses and worked on a wide range of projects, including social housing, film studios, domestic interiors, health centres and speculative housing. Connell, Ward and Lucas became among the most important British modernist architects of the interwar period (Paul Mellon Centre). Their work was frequently opposed by neighbours, planning officials and conservative architects, but the practice remained unusually uncompromising in its commitment to modern design. Connell was also a forceful public advocate for modern architecture. In 1934 his BBC radio debate with Sir Reginald Blomfield, later printed in The Listener as ‘For and Against Modern Architecture’, epitomised the conflict between modernist and traditionalist positions in Britain. Connell was a founder-member of the MARS Group of architects, and his reputation rested not only on his buildings but on his willingness to defend modernism publicly. The practice’s later houses, including 66 Frognal, Hampstead, were central to contemporary debates about concrete, flat roofs and modern architecture in established residential settings.
With the approach of the Second World War, the partnership dissolved. During the war Connell was involved in various works, including cottages for Papworth Village Settlement, whose plans he showed to Queen Elizabeth in 1943. After a period with the Ministry of Works, he developed a substantial postwar career in East Africa, working first in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and then in Kenya, where he established the practice Triad. His African projects included the Kenya Legislative Council Building in Nairobi, designed with H. Thornley Dyer, the Aga Khan Hospital and the Crown Law Offices. Climatic considerations and the question of architectural identity in colonial and post-independence Kenya encouraged a broader engagement with tropical architecture, local conditions and decoration.
Connell returned permanently to England in 1977 and continued to work almost until the end of his life. His work was revisited shortly before his death, when Connell, Ward and Lucas were represented in Thirties: British Art and Design before the War at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1979. Amyas Connell died in London, England on 19 April 1980. Posthumous interest in Connell’s work was reflected in the exhibition Connell, Ward and Lucas at the Building Centre, London, in 1994, and in the Paul Mellon Centre display Concrete and Controversy: The Architecture of Connell Ward and Lucas in 2015–16.
Irene Iacono
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Amyas Connell ]
Publications related to [Amyas Connell ] in the Ben Uri Library