Projects
Discretely dramatic
by Emily Brooks
36
In a picturesque Notting Hill mews house, MSMR Architects tackled the many challenges presented by the property’s history in order to create a light, spacious, and modern home behind a classic London façade
WEST LONDON’S Norland Place is a mews that once served the wedding-cake stuccoed houses of Holland Park Avenue. The cobbled street is seductive in its seclusion: fi lm-set handsome, with houses in a paintbox of colours. Here, MSMR Architects created an entirely new home behind a retained façade. Eschewing period pastiche, the owner called for something simple and modern, placing high-quality, tactile materials, and a feeling of space and light above fussy detailing. “Our client was quite pragmatic and didn’t want the interiors to be over- decorative,” says architect Tom Smith. “He wanted to maximise the feeling of, and was very interested in, the layout and how you would move through the house. It was all about clean proportions.”
MSMR translated this perfectly, right from the front door which steps into a broad hallway with polished concrete fl oor and a staircase with dramatic cantilevered treads and a fl oor-to-ceiling glass screen in lieu of a balustrade. At the far end, a large pocket door separates off the open-plan living space.
“It’s one of those houses where, from the front, you don’t imagine it to be so large,” says Smith. The hallway sets the tone for the entire house: the walnut veneer, used across an entire wall of storage, is repeated in the master bedroom, study, and media room. The concrete runs throughout the ground fl oor, and the oak stair treads match the fi rst- fl oor fl ooring. Rather than being monotonous, this reduced palette creates a rhythm. The client bought the house as a run-down, mixed-use building with a car workshop on the ground fl oor leading up to “a dodgy fi rst- fl oor fl at”, says Smith. There was a basement level, where the mews had originally met its grander ‘parent’ house, but it didn’t cover the whole footprint. Planning permission was in place for a rebuild, but MSMR and its client secured new permission for a more ambitious project with a full basement. The front façade had to be retained, as it is a conservation area, although in the end the lower half of this was also rebuilt. In the basement, the house now features two bedrooms with dressing areas and ensuites, a utility room,
media room, and a plant room. At ground level sit a study, open-plan kitchen-dining- living space, plus a further living room, and the fi rst fl oor comprises of a master suite, and another ensuite bedroom.
Planners stipulated the garage had to be kept as such, but the homeowner did not want one. MSMR’s response to this was to install a moving wall that can be rolled back to fi t a car in. Its inside face features walnut joinery with contrasting tomato-red display niches for art and sculpture, and this very un-garage-like room is now used as a study. The house’s proportions and layout satisfy the brief for space and light - a feat, given the lack of windows. Three-metre-high ceilings have been achieved in the basement and on the ground fl oor, and the fi rst fl oor is open to the eaves. The basement has been arranged so the two bedrooms receive all the light via a large, white-painted lightwell and with further daylight fi ltering down the stairs. A retractable skylight was placed above the kitchen island, and there are further skylights on the top fl oor.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
