Philip Jebb architect of El Cuarton

Biography of Philip Jebb Obituarand

Perhaps his finest work – El Cuarton ( 1966-70), a new village near Tarifa overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar that is there where your architect seal is most apparent . It was conceived as a set of holiday apartments on multiple levels running up the side of a cork-tree lined hill , commissioned by Hugh Millais, actor, writer, restaurateur and man of many talents . It was described as Annabel's-by-the-Sea , as its intended customers were to come from the same tranche of London café society who danced at Annabel's night club , which Jebb had created for Mark Birley 10 years previously . The brief was for a new 18th-century Spanish village . Jebb's attention to detail meant the brief was met elegantly and without collapsing into pastiche . At the same time the positioning of the “blocks” of apartments – in relation to each other and to the steeply sloping site – is a triumph of witty three-dimensional planning . And the main façade of the village, approached from below , has an almost Cubist quality ( expressing one plane and many at the same time ), quite unlike anything else in Jebb's work . The villas around the village show Jeb at his most playful and elegant. .