66—MARYLEBONE JOURNAL SPACE
SPATIAL AWARENESS GAVIN EYLES OF CORRIGAN, SOUNDY & KILAIDITY ON HOW TO CREATE A QUART OF LIVING SPACE FROM A PINT POT OF MARYLEBONE MEWS
BY VIEL RICHARDSON
What was your brief at Cavendish Mews South? The project comprises four properties – numbers 5,6,7,and 8 – whereas the original site only contained two properties. Our initial brief was to demolish both properties and to build new contemporary mews houses. It was quite an open brief, we were initially just asked to see what we could get on the site. We decided on creating four new properties fairly early on. The site was about 22m wide and when you divide that by four you get a bay width of about 5.5m, which is fine for a house. During pre- planning we found that parts of the site were Listed and we were asked by Westminster and English Heritage to keep the front and rear façades of the old number 5.
How did you approach the use of space in the project? You start off with a clear idea of what you want to do, how you want to bring in the light and air. First we placed the stairwells and the light wells. After that, it is like a jigsaw – we put the main rooms front and back, and then designed the spaces in between. Sometimes you end up with peculiar spaces, especially working with existing buildings, so it is about utilising them as best you can and
working out what you can use them for. It’s about thinking on your feet. Buildings like this develop as you go along. For instance, one wardrobe sat next to a dormer. It created a useless space, but we pushed drawers into that space which opened sideways into the wardrobe, and suddenly we had some quirky but very useful storage. On a larger scale, in the basement
of the old number 6 there was an existing right-of-way fire escape from a nearby building that we had to maintain. It came through the centre of the ground floor, right in the middle of some very valuable space. Using some space regained from old vaults, we re-routed the fire escape via the ground floor level. This left us with a very wide stairwell above the new escape route, so we took the opportunity to create a place to put statues, or plants, or to just sit. It sits below a roof light, again bringing in natural light. The stair above this space is set away from the wall with glass in-fills allowing more light to flood down the wall into the heart of the plan. Again, it’s about finding an odd
space and turning it into a delight. It is the kind of thing that can only happen as the project develops. It is about staying open minded. It’s
about seeing the opportunity. This way you can create some really dynamic spaces that you hadn’t planned for.
The spaces feel light and airy. How did you achieve this? We dropped a light well down the front of each building by setting the internal entrance back by about 1.5m from the external facade. This allowed us to get fresh air and natural light down to the basement levels. At the rear of the buildings we put in light wells from the roof level down to the ground floor or basement levels. This is recreated in the middle of the plan with a generous staircase with roof light at the top. The idea was to divide the properties in the middle with a generous stairwell with a large roof light. We used open risers for the stairs so that light can reflect down into the heart of the property, and they also helped with the stack effect. We have placed the bathrooms off
this generous stairwell and made use of the natural light flooding down by putting opaque glass onto the side of the bathrooms. This means when you are in your bathroom you still get a generous amount of natural light, and still feel connected with what is going on outside. The stairwell is a hard-working part of the design,
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