This project is a rare example of a new build house in Central London, in the Hampstead Conservation Area. Alison Brooks Architects was commissioned by a private client to design a new model of family home, tailored to the fluid, informal lifestyles of its five family members. The project site is in Belsize Park, Hampstead, one of London’s most characterful neighbourhoods, known for its lush greenery and wide spectrum of domestic architecture. The site is both sloping and wedge-shaped, with a wide frontage that ‘turns the corner‘of Belsize Lane. A crucial technical constraint was to ensure 100% daylight was maintained to the windows of neighbouring buildings, requiring careful 3D modelling of the overall building form. This unusual site called for a careful negotiation of the building form both as a piece of streetscape, and as an instrument to create an intimate domestic landscape.
The client desired a generous and transparent house that took advantage of its primary south facing orientation. Our design approach was inspired by the character and material of neighbouring Victorian villas, and Hampstead’s grand Arts and Crafts houses, with their pronounced bay windows, animated rooflines and hung terracotta tiled façades. These elements have been abstracted into a series of faceted planes that unify façade, roof and walls. The design was entirely generated in 3D CAD as a polygon mesh to resolve the geometric interfaces between built volume, protected light angles, existing building lines, and topography. The name describes both Alison Brooks Architects’ design tool for this project, as well as the idea of the house as a filter through which light, landscape and human connections are made.
The key organising principle of the plan is its central courtyard that opens to the south. This courtyard subverts or ‘stretches’ the traditional Victorian archetype of deep plan and imposing orthogonal volume, embedding landscape light and at the centre of the plan. The elongated plan and central transparent court allow views through and between internal spaces to its three gardens; front, centre and rear.
The house is porous and elongated, not only in plan, but in section. Ground, first and second floors are perforated by double and triple height spaces. Glazed apertures punctuate roof and ground planes. These vertical spaces and transparent planes allow visual and audible connections between floors, capturing views and pulling light into the deepest parts of the house. The architecture allows unexpected moments of connection to the sky and the passing of seasons, two of London’s rarest commodities.
Central to the concept and tactile experience of all Alison Brooks Architects houses is the stair. In the Mesh House, the stair is a winding ribbon of steel and timber, reflecting the informal geometry of the house.
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