ew post-war architects suffered the levels of
criticism levelled at Richard Seifert. Seifert,
who built one of the largest practices in
post-war Britain on the back of close
relationships with property developers, seemed to stand
at odds with the welfare-state focused architecture of
the period. That many of the leading architects of the
post-war years also designed flagrantly commercial ·work
(the numerous shopping centres designed by Frederick
Gibberd or Basil Spence's work for Land Securities)
didn't seem to matter to his critics. Seifert's
'commercial' reputation was justification enough for
him to serve as a shorthand for all the ills of property
development and its architecture. Yet his practice,
which was one of the largest and likely the most
profitable in Britain in the 1960 s and 1970 s, was
responsible for the design of hundreds of buildings
across the world. Richard Seifert was both an abject
critical failure and a resounding commercial success.
H e had struggled to establish himself following his
graduation from the Bartlett in 1933. The immediate
post-war period also seems to have been something of
a struggle. But London's commer cial office boom of
the 1950s entirely changed the fortunes of his practice.
In order to channel reconstruction efforts into housing
and industry, the earliest post-war governments had
tightly restricted access to building materials through a
complex system of licences and a 100 per cent tax on the
profits of property development. The repeal of these, in
1953 and 1954, unleashed the pent-up energy of the
market. Developers rushed to build speculative office
developments all over the City and V\Test End, entirely
changing the face of central London in a few short years.
Seifert initially obtained these types of speculative
office commissions from the developer Felix Fenston,
who he may have known through familial connections.
Fenston, a rakish chap with a tin-leg and a fondness for
Old ~1asters, introduced Seifert to a younger developer,
Harry Hyams, who vvas a transformative figure in the
Seifert story. In 1958 Hyams secured t he site of what
would become the practice's most famous building,
Centre Point. In that same year R Seifert & Partners
was formed, with Richard Seifert owning 80 per cent of
the business and two of his former associates, Tony
Henderson and George Marsh, owning 10 per cent each.
Seifert seems to have become less involved in the
aesthetic design of his practice's work at this date: in
Marsh he had engaged a talented designer who could
blend the influences of J!Iarcel Breuer, Oscar Niemeyer
and Gio Ponti into arresting visual schemas, such as the
Tolworth Tower in Kingston-upon-Thames. Seifert
continued to take the lead on client liaison and planning
negotiations for his practice's buildings, however. One
commentator, writing in 1967 , noted of the practice that
'the boss deals with all the clients, sees all the vital
correspondence and knows everything that goes on'.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, most of the Seifert
practice's output, such as the corncob-like Space House
in London's Kemble Street, failed to register with the
architectural press. Centre Point's completion in 1966
changed this. The building attracted positive reviews
in several architectural publications, and a warily
respectful tone crept into coverage of the practice's
work for a time thereafter. The Architects) Jou1·nal's
Astragal wrote in 1970 that 'for some t he ver y name of
Seifert is a symbol of the capitalist system and its
concomitant social ills. To others it suggests the truly
Key works
Factory for Rival Lamps,
Brighton, 1947
Woolworth's,
London, 1956
Space House,
London, 1962
Centre Point,
London, 1966
Royal Garden Hotel,
London, 1966
Sussex Heights,
Brighton, 1968
Tolworth Tower,
Kingston-upon-Thames,
1968
Concourse House,
Liverpool, 1969
NLA Tower, Croydon, 1970
Sobell Sports Centre,
London, 1973
Euston Station offices,
London, 1978
Natwest Tower,
London, 1981Quote
'If people think you are a
millionaire, it is so much
easier to borrow money'~ professional entrepreneur[ ... ] like it or not, the work of
2: - Richard Seifert & Partners is stamped ·with an
a:
~ _J individual panache'.
3 The gathering storm around Centre Point's
~ management, however, meant that Seifert's honeymoon
~ vvith t he architectural press vvas all too brief. By the
~ early 1970s it was clear that Hyams was purposely
keeping Centre Point empty. In 1965 the Labour
government had introduced a moratorium on the
construction of speculative office buildings in London
and several other cities. This cut the supply of office
space in London while demand remained high; as a
result, office rents rose exponentially. As the capital
value of a completed speculative office block was
extrapolated from its rent, or in the case of empty
offices, potential rental income, in periods of rising rents
a developer could sit back and watch the capital value of
empty office buildings increase. Centre Point, standing
vacant on one of the country's most famous shopping
str eets, became a target for activists and inequality
campaigner s. In November 1972, Camden's Labour
Council called for the compulsory purchase of the
housing at Centre Point. The following summer the
Labour ~1P for Camden, Lena Jeger, stated in the House
of Commons that: 'Centre Point is a symbol of a society
in which those who make money are more blessed than
those who earn money'. In 1974 Centre Point was
squatted by a group of protesters: they hung satirical
banners from the building's many windows, including
one that simply read 'We love you Harry'.
The Seifert practice's reputation suffered apace.
A 1972 entry in the AJ's Astragal column encapsulates
this changed perception of the practice: 'If society takes
a property developer's architect as the epitome of the
profession, then it has its values all wrong. Apart from
anything else, it is hard not to dislike his buildings - and
indeed, regret their existence'. The AR was no less
forthright in its condemnation: a 1975 editorial
dismissed Centre Point as 'a symbol of hatefulness, a
topographic cyst'.
Seifert was regularly lampooned in Private Eye. One
particularly venomous article was accompanied by
caricatures of developers and their architects. Seifert
was shown as a kind of wasp, with exaggerated facial
features, an image captioned with the phrase: 'The
Seifert, this ugly-looking little fellow ... is especially
clever at worming his way out of loopholes. Very nasty'.
There is more than a hint of DeT Sturme1· to this
depiction of Seifert and the criticisms of him and his
practice were often tinged with anti-Semitism. P1·ivate
Eye, for example, affected to find something shady in
the fact that Seifert, whose given name was Reuben, had
adopted an anglicised first name, a common practice
among the Brit ish Jewish community at this time. The
architectural press wasn't above this sort of thing either.
A 1972 Astragal column, which reported the rumour
that the Seifert practice could be included in the
competition to design Robinson College, Cambridge,
appeared under the heading 'St Rubin's College?'
Against this hostile background, how had Seifert
prospered? He maintained that his success was down to
simply satisfying his clients. Given the RIBA's
proscription of advertising, the Seifert practice had
largely relied on word of mouth to establish their
reputation. As Seifert himself said, 'A satisfied client
briefs another client ... up to now, that's the only kind of
promotion ·we've used. I've never chased after work or