Building Holmes

Wed October 1st 2009

A Restored Georgian Terraced House
Located on a side road just off London’s fashionable Brick Lane, in Spitalfields, is a remarkably preserved piece of early 19th century London, a series of brick terraced houses and workshops with neat rows of sash windows that have been caught in a time warp. Waves of immigrants - Protestant Huguenots from France, Jews from Eastern European, and more latterly Bengalis and Somalis, have washed through this part of East London, which lies just outside the City Walls, fleeing persecution or simply seeking a better life, but moving on quickly enough to leave their surroundings all but untouched.
This house we are viewing today is typical of many in the area, four storeys high, with a narrow one room deep footprint, only this one is slightly different in that it is double width, with a pair of tall doors to one side to allow horse drawn carts to enter and park in the coach house at the end of the rear yard.
Preserved by neglect, the property has remarkable character, which has gently been conserved and restored by its new owner, an artist, in collaboration with a specialist team of conservation architects and craftsmen.
Internally the rooms are finished in timber panelling or boards, with the original paintwork still visible in many places.
The partitions between some rooms are simply one inch thick studwork covered in timber. Beautiful Georgian fire surrounds and hearths remain intact in several rooms, as does much of the original staircase and magnificently wide oak floor boards.
Given that the building is both listed, and within a conservation area, adding an extension was always going to be controversial, but by coming up with a contemporary design scheme that still manages to reflect the materials and proportions of the original architecture, a solution has been found that complements and enhances the old house.
The rear extension adds new rooms on all four levels, basement to roof, more or less doubling it in size. In order to create access from the existing staircase, the new levels are reached from the half landings and so each floor is split level, with bedrooms and bathrooms to the front, and workspace, gallery, kitchen breakfast room, and living room, each on successive floors working up.
At the end of the garden the old coach house has been all but rebuilt using reclaimed brick, to create a two storey self-contained cottage, with a large open plan kitchen dining and living space on the ground floor, and a bedroom and bathroom above in the roofspace.
This is a remarkable conservation project that has given a small but important piece of our architectural heritage a new lease of life.

A Luxury Mews House In Belgravia
From über fashionable Brick Lane to über exclusive Belgravia, our next project of the day is a Mews house with an address in one of London’s most desirable locations, just round the corner from Knightsbridge and Hyde Park.
Here, an innovative architectural design scheme has turned a relatively small and dark terraced mews house into a spacious, light filled contemporary home with some remarkable features.
The project involved gutting the building to leave only the original external walls in place, digging out a new basement level, extending at the rear to incorporate the small external courtyard garden within the house, and building a new roof designed to provide an additional storey.
The result is an elegant townhouse with a remarkable lightwell running through all four storeys, topped with a glass roof that brings sunlight pouring down through the whole of the property. Each floor has a gallery overlooking the lightwell, where a waterfall runs gently down the back wall, ending in a pool at basement level.
To make the very most of the light from the front windows and lightwell, the basement, ground and first floor levels are all semi open plan, with few walls and simple glass balustrading to the galleries.
The specification is as good as it can get, with beautiful finishes throughout, and an elegant contemporary interior design scheme that is warm, with sensuous textures, and atmospheric lighting and colour scheme. The budget was huge, but the results are simply stunning.

An Extended and Remodelled Terraced House
The last of the fifteen shortlisted projects in this year’s awards is a classic Victorian terraced house that has been remodelled and extended by its architect owner to create a modern family house.
The building has been extended across its full width at the back, taking in the side return alley to create the maximum permissible ground floor footprint.
Previously converted into flats, all of the period detailing had already been lost, so the owners had no qualms about gutting it to create clutter free, contemporary style interiors.
The partition walls and rear external wall of the property have been removed on the ground floor, and replaced by steelwork, so upon entering via the front door, there is a clear line of vision through the whole property and beyond via glazed doors into the garden. This configuration makes the most of the space and light.
Although open plan, there is a partial division running front to back, created by a bank of floor to ceiling kitchen units, which separate the kitchen to the right and forms a walkway to the left, which links to a small utility room, cloakroom and at the end a small but cosy living area/TV room.
The main ground floor space is laid with 450mm wide Douglas fir floorboards, which are so wide and so well matched that it looks as if the entire floor is laid with a single piece of timber.
Living space at the front leads into the kitchen in the heart of the house, designed around a central island unit. Beyond this is an informal dining area, with glazed doors leading onto the paved terrace.
On the first floor, the original layout has been reconfigured so that the central bedroom has been converted into a generous en suite bathroom serving the principal bedroom at the front of the property.
Clad in marble, with a central contemporary style rolltop bath and frameless glass shower cubicle, it is wonderfully luxurious and indulgent.
The second floor provides further bedrooms and a bathroom and a space saver staircase leads into a small attic room.
There are only so many solutions for remodelling Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing, but this one is certainly amongst the best I have seen and will no doubt be emulated time and time again.