Chamberlin, Powell, & Bon

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Chamberlin, Powell, & Bon. London-based partnership established after Geoffry Charles Hamilton Powell (1920–99) won the competition to design new housing at Golden Lane, a prominent bomb-site in the City of London, built 1953–7. Powell invited two other young architects, Peter Hugh Girard Chamberlin (known as ‘Joe’—1919–78) and Christoph Bon (1921–99), to join him to realise the project. Other works followed, then the Corporation of London invited the firm to submit ideas for 35 acres of land which led to the commission to design the huge Barbican development (1955–82), arguably by far the best example in the British Isles of a high-density urban scheme, incorporating cultural, residential, and educational uses, influenced by the theories of Le Corbusier. Other works include Bousfield School, South Kensington, London (1955–6—where Mies van der Rohe's architecture was the precedent), and buildings at New Hall, Cambridge (1962–6—where the hall dome and circular stair-towers were seen to have historical allusions), the University of Leeds, Yorks. (1959–74), the Vanbrugh Park Housing at Greenwich (1960s), and the University of Birmingham (also 1960s).

Bibliography

Kalman (1994); information from Philippa Cooper

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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