This project is a collaboration between two old friends and architects, and is designed as a home for personal use.
Having found a site in Homerton at auction in 2014, we went through a number of designs and meanwhile uses - including a shop and a studio cabin - before we got planning permission in 2018 for a 2-bedroom dwellinghouse.
The design itself is heavily directed by its constraints - the site being an infill in a Victorian parade of shops, driving a key response in compartmentalising its narrow width (varying from 4.1m to 3.2m) and length (22m). Towards the private yard to the rear, enclosed by the arching terrace, it responds to the neighbouring building lines and windows in how it terraces back from the ground floor to the second, each storey pivoting to a new contextual value.
After a careful reading of this context, it became a process of ‘restitching’ the terrace together, completing the line of buildings with a nod to the imagined original intention of the Victorian builders. Internally, we developed the spatial programme with a communal ground floor with a bed and bath per floor above, the stairs pulled to the street-side to create both a buffer and allow us to position the main window between floor plates. On each floor we followed a similar pattern of stairs with bathroom accessed off the landing, towards a constriction of storage/ ancillary spaces in the middle of the plan giving way to the habitable living/bed space to the quieter rear.
The house is presently for sale.