Torilla is a

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

house in Wilkin's Green Lane in Hatfield, England. It was designed in 1934–35 by F. R. S. Yorke in the

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

style and has influences from

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

Maison La Roche Villa La Roche, also Maison La Roche, is a house in Paris, designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret in 1923–1925. It was designed for Raoul La Roche, a Swiss banker from Basel and collector of avant-garde art. Villa La Roche now ...

. This was the first building designed by Yorke.

Occupation and use

Torilla was unoccupied for several decades and became derelict. According to an article in the ''Independent'' on 19 March 1995, "the house had always been almost uninhabitable because of faults in its experimental design. The concrete walls and roof were too thin and lacked thermal insulation. Mould grew on walls and curtains and clothing rotted when it was heated because of excess condensation on cold walls." The cost of repairs to make it habitable was estimated at £400,000.

Listing and conservation

According to the Independent article, Torilla had been listed in 1983 then delisted the following year when permission was given to demolish it. It was bought by a new purchaser on 11 May 1993 who intended to demolish it, but who discovered it had been re-listed the previous month, on 23 April 1993. The architect John Winter later took on the work of conservation of the house.

Occupation and use

Listing and conservation

References

Further reading