House Neovision

In 1955 architect Peter Stead and artist Stephen Gilbert worked together to conceive a house that aimed to synthesise painting and architecture. They looked to the theories of De Stijl, a movement founded in the Netherlands in 1917 by artist Piet Mondrian and artist and architect Theo van Doesburg. Stead and Gilbert proposed a modular house composed of cubes of space defined by the primary colours and black. This colour was integral to the structure, rather than supplementary decoration. As Gilbert wrote, he could ‘in fact, sculpt space; making a structure which is interpenetrated by space visually unenclosed by its transparent glass-wall areas, and determined by the planes of colour composing it.’ [1]

The designs for the house are demonstrated by five objects in the Sainsbury Centre Collection: a model by Stephen Gilbert [31271] and four drawings by Peter Stead [31329C; 31329D; 31329E; 31329F]. While Gilbert’s model demonstrates how aluminium and colour can be used to construct space, Stead’s drawings are line drawings in black ink demonstrating various compositions for the structure.

The close material and stylistic relationship between Gilbert’s model for this house and his geometric sculpture, such as Construction, in the Sainsbury Centre collection [31183], demonstrates how closely he was translating his sculptural concerns into architecture.

Gilbert had formed a group they termed ‘Néovision’ with the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys; Hungarian born French artist Nicolas Schöffer; and French architect Claude Parent. One of their theories was ‘spatiodynamism’ or ‘space dynamism, defined as ‘the constructive and dynamic integration of space in a plastic work’. [2] Through this idea, they aimed to build cities as total environments. Gilbert and Stead used this name to define their collaboration, indicating that they were utilising the theory and ambition of this group for artists and architects to collaborate. The British architect and colleague of Peter Stead, David Lewis, wrote that the houses conceived by Stead and Gilbert, ‘should be seen, I think, not as art theory, but as buildings which drew from art theory’. [3]

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