River Court East
Upper Ground, London SE1
"Seifert built more London buildings than Sir Christopher Wren, and undeniably had as great an effect upon the city skyline." - Martin Pawley, The Guardian
This exceptional penthouse apartment occupies the top floor of River Court, a landmark residential block perched on the banks of the river Thames, designed by Richard Seifert and completed in 1977.
History
Richard Seifert was born to a Swiss family in 1910 and first came to London as a boy. He won a scholarship to the Bartlett School of Architecture and graduated in 1933. After an apprenticeship as a trainee surveyor and architectural assistant, he set up his own practice, specialising in speculative housing schemes of traditional appearance for which he claims he used to charge three pounds a house.
During the second world war Seifert served in the Royal Engineers in India and Burma, rising to the rank of Colonel, a title he often insisted on using in practice as an architect.
Through a mixture of relentless attention to detail, commercial savvy and a mastery of town planning Seifert essentially brought the commercial tower block to UK city centres. Nowhere did he achieve this more notably than in London. He is said to have built over 500 buildings in the capital alone, paving the way for the high rise aesthetics of twentieth century practitioners such as Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano.
Stylistically, Seifert was a creature of pragmatism, veering from Modernism-by-numbers to bombastic forms of Brutalism, always with a view to securing his clients' unprecedented space, height and value for money.
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