Nationality British Occupation Architect | Practice Team 4 (1963) Name Georgie Wolton | |
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Full Name Georgina Cheesman Buildings Cliff Road Studios, London Alma mater Architectural Association School of Architecture | ||
Georgie Wolton (née Cheesman; born 1934) is a British architect, an original member of the architecture firm Team 4. Critic Jonathan Meades describes her as the "outstanding woman architect of the generation before Zaha [Hadid]".
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Biography
Georgie Cheesman trained at the Architectural Association and during her travels to the United States became a fan of the Eames House and Philip Johnson's Glass House.
Together with her sister, Wendy Cheesman, she was a founding member in 1963 of the architectural firm, Team 4, together with Su Brumwell, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. As the only qualified architect in the group, she effectively enabled the practice to operate. Wolton left the practice after a few months, leaving the others to pass their professional exams.
Wolton went on to practise on her own, her most well known works being Cliff Road Studios in Lower Holloway, London, and The River Cafe garden in Hammersmith. They both date from the late 1960s. Wolton also designed a house in Surrey, with an experimental use of CorTen steel. Meades suggests Wolton was "at the head of the very earliest vanguard of that tendency... that tirelessly reworks the forms of early modernism to the point where they are hardly distinguishable from their models." While reviewing the book Guide to the Architecture of London architectural critic Owen Hatherley described Wolton as "an exceptionally rare woman" in a group of architects who "tried to continue some form of modern classicism" during the 1970s and 80s.
Wolton later took up painting and became a successful landscape artist.