ABSTRACT
The house which Michael and Patty Hopkins completed in 1977 on Downshire Hill in Hampstead, London, is, like the Eames House, a steel and glass box. Set low into an irregular row of early and mid-nineteenth-century town houses and suburban villas, this box appears recessive from the street and reflective from the garden. It is so much at odds with its neighbours that its role as a house is not immediately apparent: it could be an office, perhaps, or a group-practice surgery, but not a home. Yet this was the building which appeared on the cover of The Architectural Review 1 and the RIBA Journal, 2 which won both an RIBA Architecture Award and a Civic Trust Award, and which is included in every book on modern architecture in London. When the announcement was made in February 1994 that Michael and Patricia Hopkins had been awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, it was pointed out that the only other husband and wife team to receive the award had been Charles and Ray Eames. 3
