A rear extension to a modest two-storey terrace house in South West London. The full width extension is designed to incorporate a small planted courtyard area bringing the exterior into the interior and vice versa. The extension seating area has garden on both sides, creating a sense of detachment and escape from the main house and immersion in the garden. The courtyard retains natural light and ventilation to the existing bathroom window and kitchen area.
To keep on site construction costs down, the main structure is built using a timber frame that is clad in brick slips. The building sits on an innovative foundation system manufactured by Quickbase.
The refurbishment of an apartment over three levels in a West London period mansion block. A replacement staircase was designed to link the main living space to the roof top conservatory and external terrace. The extruded forms of the new stair flights are clad in rubber and inserted into the existing void. They hover independent of one-another and are offset from the flank wall so as not to conflict with the existing traditional sash window.
In the master bedroom the original features and volume of the room are preserved whilst the inserted architectural furniture conceals an en suite shower room and wardrobes.
The compact bathroom has a Corian door that sits flush in the wall adjacent to the wash hand basin. When opened it reveals the shower controls and the door becomes the shower screen. Similarly, due to its proximity with the bath, the WC pan is built into and concealed by an extension of the bath surround.
The Lycee is a loft apartment for a professional fashion photographer, in a converted South London school building. As the second home for our New York based client, the space is also used as a location for photographic shoots. As such, the project was developed as a series of architectural elements to provide strong but neutral background features or framing for photographs. The level change in the main space and bedrooms varies the topography of the interior. Floating walls and multiple openings to each room allow the spaces to be viewed or lit from a variety of directions. As both a home and a photographic location the layering of spaces constantly change as you move through and around the apartment offering an animated, open-ended backdrop for living and working.
Cloaked in ivy, this modest chapel building has been converted from a book depository to a home. Entering at ground floor level there is a grid of load-bearing timber stud partitions attenuated to form a kitchen, utility, bedrooms and bathroom. Around the tall leaded west facing windows a clearing is formed and the full volume of the chapel opens up to an elevated open plan living deck.
A proprietary product used to create a small circular opening in an existing wall structure. A 150mm diameter core hole is drilled to receive a sleeve that is cut to length to suit the wall thickness. A double glazed unit is fitted to be flush with the external face of the wall and the internal end of the liner can be plastered in or fitted with a trim.
Door: 11 rue Larrey - "This door was located in a corner of the main living area, positioned in such a way as to close the entrance either to the bedroom or to the bathroom, but not both at the same time. In opposition to the axiom implicit in the common French adage...'A door must be either open or closed', Duchamp has ingeniously managed to defy the assumption of mutual exclusivity, uniting these contradictory themes into a compatible totality, or as he might have preferred to describe it, 'a reconciliation of opposites'.
Based loosely on Duchamp's work, Door: 11 rue Larrey, the hinge stands in contradiction to those already in place at the flat. The existing 'riser butt' hinges are equipped with a mechanism that utilises the door's self weight to activate its own closure. The door cannot be 'accidentally' left open or ajar but must be propped. The proposed hinge type reverses this mechanism resulting in the self-opening door having to be propped ajar or fully closed. But it is not the mechanism of the hinge alone that yearns to be revealed. A tension exists between a desire (for the hinge resplendent in 24 carat gold plate bearing the much coveted insignia of the 'Nike Swoosh' and, consequently the occupant) to be seen and the pre-conditioned desire for privacy, the ultimate function of the door being to exclude.