585. Philip Webb (for William Morris), Red House,

Bexleyheath, Kent, 1859-1860 (United Kingdom)

This seminal building in the nascent Arts and Crafts Movement was designed for William Morris and his new wife, but they lived there for only five years. Intended to be the gathering place of a new brotherhood of artists, designers and craftsmen, Red House was a physical manifestation of Morris’s moral dedication to the revival of craft traditions. With its steep tile roofs and asymmetrical plan it generally suggests a late medieval building that has been added to over centuries, for many of the details—such as sash windows—borrow eclectically from different periods. Morris’s colleague Dante Gabriel Rossetti remarked that it was “more of a poem than a house.” Though emphasising simplicity and natural materials, the interior contains rich wall paintings and stained glass by Edward Burne-Jones. In 1904 the German architect and scholar Hermann Muthesius described Webb’s building as “the first house to be conceived as a whole inside and out, the very first example in the history of the modern house.” Red House was acquired by the National Trust in 2003, and is now open to the public.