Nick Hill Architects has completed the retrofit of a 1930s building, originally adapted into a home in the 1980s, as a home for artists Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier.
Source:Nick Hill Architects
The two-storey building sits on a large plot at a 45-degree angle to the street and is bordered on all four sides by mature gardens. It was originally constructed in the 1930s as lying-in accommodation for new mothers but was liberally adapted and extended during the 1980s, resulting in a disjointed external appearance and awkward internal layout.
Nick Hill Architects’ project was conceived as a series of small interventions, gently repairing and upgrading the exterior and reworking the interior to create a more legible, usable sequence of rooms with better daylighting and connections out to the garden.
A triangular-shaped concrete porch frames a new front door facing the street, while new windows and doors replace 1980s aluminium framed glazing. The replacement windows facing the street have timber frames and are multi-paned to maintain the historic appearance, while those facing the garden have large format, bronze-anodised aluminium frames, maximising views out.
A new front-to-back kitchen and dining room creates a focus to the ground floor with all main rooms leading off from it. The kitchen island is designed like a free-standing piece of furniture akin to a sideboard, preventing the kitchen from dominating the character of the dining room and living spaces.
A utility room leads off the kitchen with direct access to the garden. Floor, walls and work surfaces are wrapped in a continuous ceramic tiled finish with an integrated sink and a shower specifically sized for the owners’ dog.
On the first floor, the layout is adapted to create a principal bedroom suite that includes a dressing room and bathroom. The dressing room is lined with full-height fitted wardrobes with door fronts wrapped in marled linen. The bathroom, meanwhile, is detailed in large terrazzo slabs with profiled iroko joinery forming the shower screen, bath surround and mirrored vanity unit.
Architect’s view
This was a lockdown project and, in many ways, it shows in the final outcome. It benefited from that strange lacuna that opened up for a while when business was anything but usual and, for once, time was in abundance.
Zoom calls with the client, developing ideas for the project, became a welcome distraction for all of us from the oddness of what was going on elsewhere. Ideas were worked and reworked, layouts improved, the material palette broadened, and the project ever more closely fitted to the clients’ aims. It’s unquestionably a richer product as a result.
Through sympathetic choice of materials, colours, and careful detailing, the project restores to the house a sense of calmness and cohesion that was missing, and creates intrigue by leaving ambiguous what is original, what has been altered and what is entirely new.
The project aims to be an exemplar of retrofit in a time of climate emergency, when views on what is best practice are shifting, and considerations surrounding the benefits of building conservation, or renewal, are ever more closely measured against their environmental costs.
Nick Hill, director, Nick Hill Architects
Client’s view
We bought the house for its unusually large plot and garden. The house itself had little appeal – it had been unsympathetically tampered with over the years without the input of a good architect.
We wanted to work with Nick due to his collaborative ethos with his clients and his particular sensibility towards materials. He listened carefully to our ideas and wishes but what he ultimately achieved was insightful and far surpassed our expectations. There is not one corner of the house that has not been resolved and there is now a wonderful fluidity to the space. Light reaches through the house and we have precisely the mix of intimacy and space that we wanted.
The palette of materials and colours he introduced is both coherent and varied. The design process was a creative exchange although we quickly realised that we could trust Nick to design what we wanted and, as a result, the house feels very personal to us.
Vong Phaophanit and Claire Obouissier
Source:Nick Hill Architects
Project data
Start on site January 2022
Completion date June 2023
Gross internal floor area 220m2
Form of contract JCT Minor Works
Construction cost Undisclosed
Architect Nick Hill Architects
Client Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier
Structural engineer Engineers HRW
Quantity surveyor Brendan Hennessy Associates
Principal designer Nick Hill Architects
Approved building inspector Cook Brown Building Control
Main contractor BDL London
CAD software used AutoCAD LT
Source:Nick Hill Architects