Span Developments
The Keep, Blackheath, a typical set of houses to Eric Lyons' T2 design
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| property development | |
| Industry | construction |
| Founded | 1956 |
| Founders | Eric Lyons, Geoffrey Townsend |
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Area served
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Southern England |
Span Developments Limited was a British property development company formed in the late 1950s by Geoffrey Townsend working in long and close partnership with Eric Lyons as consultant architect. During its most successful period in the 1960s, Span built over 2,000 homes in London, Surrey, Kent and East Sussex – mainly two and three bedroom single-family homes and apartment buildings.
Lyons and Townsend first met whilst studying architecture at evening-classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic in the 1930s. Townsend started his first architectural practice, Modern Homes, in Richmond in 1937 and Lyons joined soon after. Commissions were sparse in the immediate pre-war period but they reunited after the war, working mostly on war-damage restoration and house alteration projects and the business progressed. In 1948 they secured a contract to design a development of 24 flats in Whitton. This development, Oaklands, exhibited many of the features of their subsequent successful style.
Span were notable for several characteristics, radical for their time, that continue to inspire and influence. Lyons and Townsend shared a vision of social housing.
The test of good housing is not whether it can be built easily, but whether it can be lived in easily.
Architecturally, their designs combined modernist design with attention to detail and harmony with the suburban environment. Their house designs usually had mono-pitch roofs with large, clerestory high level windows and open-plan interiors. However, these were softened by more traditional features such as hung tiles and work.
The Span ethos was to build "homes within a garden", so most developments include large integrated landscape communal gardens. The exterior space is a recognised feature and many Span developments are car-free – a radical difference from other post war developments. Concealed communal parking was deliberately located to encourage opportunities for social interaction.
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Wikipedia