London's annual Open House event takes place this weekend, giving residents and visitors access to more than 600 of the city's public and private buildings. Offered a chance to preview some of the homes on display, we chose three that, in a way, put new architectural wine into old bottles.
Modern mews
Designed by Eger Architects, 7 Stories Mews, Camberwell, south London, is a contemporary take on the traditional mews house - the classic, cosy English residence typically converted from a stable. This one stands at the foot of the garden of a family house and is accessible from either the garden or mews side, since it was conceived as additional accommodation for the family home.
"It was important for us that the two houses could interact - that there could be a dialogue between them," explains main house resident and projectmanager Charlie Errington.
One could say the front of No. 7 is its back, and vice-versa. The garden side of the house is very "open", full of glazing and rebounding light, while the mews side, technically the front of the house, remains quite "closed" - a discreet, rendered wall with garage and front doors and three small windows set high up.
For a property that occupies such a small footprint (as one would expect of a mews house), No. 7 feels extraordinarily spacious and light inside (unlike most mews houses). This is the result of a double-height living area, with atimber-strutted roof forming vaulting arcs above, and a large expanse ofglazing that looks on to the garden and catches the evening sun.
The backbone of this house is timber. To a layperson's eye, it looks like beams and posts of limed oak interlocking to support a curved roof. But architect John Eger explains this is laminated timber construction; these "beams" are actually layers of sustainable Norwegian spruce that have been compressed, laminated, cut to size and coated with a translucent, protective lacquer. As such, they are amazingly strong, hard-wearing and virtually maintenance free.
The roof is a structural membrane, which removes the need for cross-bracing and leaves the vaulting lines of the ceiling to sing. The exterior render, on both the mews and garden side, has a wonderful patina that comes from its constituents of river-washed sand, white Portland cement and lots of lime. The house was short-listed for the Architects Journal Small Projects Award last year, and John Eger seems justifiably proud. This, despite the fact that "the two-month over-run meant we only just broke even".
Eger Architects may be best known for public buildings (two of which, the Hub and Grass Roots communitycentres, are also open this weekend in Newham, south London), but the company still relishes its small-scaleresidential projects. "They are nice things to do," Eger says.
Hidden cool
Travel east from Norman Foster's Gherkin, along the thundering Mile End Road, and almost opposite Mile End tube in east London is Rhondda Grove, a quiet tree-lined street of graceful early Victorian houses. The elegant façade of No. 16 matches many of its neighbours'; only the smart, brushed steel door-furniture hints at what lies beyond.
Step through the entrance and you enter a vision of contemporary, minimalist living. All the elements are here: clean, simple lines; the total absence of clutter; acres of white walls serving as perfect backdrops for bold, contemporary artworks; an abundance of glass, used in room dividers, balustrades and even in the floor of a reception room; lots of clever, invisible storage; and walls, both internal and external, that fold out of sight.
According to architect James Lambert, who was hired to transform No. 16, the house was extremely dilapidated before work began. It had to be completely gutted and put back together, which suited the owners' brief for a totally modern reworking. Lambert clearly enjoyed getting into the house and "turning up the volume", as he puts it.
In addition to a cool, contemporary look, the owners also wanted a family-friendly home, able to accommodate the needs of three normal, lively children. "This house had to be easy to live with," Lambert says, showing me the abundance of storage lying behind flush, white panels. "Everything in this house has its place."
On the second storey, three small bedrooms have given way to one huge one that spans the depth of the house. It is a perfectly serene white space, with a fine view back towards the Gherkin. ("We used to joke that Foster's building was going up more quickly than ours," Lambert confides, referring to his project's 18-month duration). The party piece of this room is its folding, soundproofed wall, which emerges from the invisible storage units to provide an instant spare bedroom. Another folding wall, more expected this time, can be found down on the lower ground level. Here an impressive, state-of-the-art kitchen is open to a huge, white lounging and dining space, the glazed wall of which folds back seamlessly to the courtyard deck.
Lambert acknowledges that living a minimalist lifestyle requires discipline but insists that the owner of No. 16 has the right mind-set and always keeps the house pristine. "I think the children are learning to put things away, too," he adds.
Historical allusions
Ken Taylor is passionate about buildings and dismissive of the pin-up school of architecture where homes are designed to look good in glossy magazine spreads.
"Buildings have a life; they have a smell," he says. "They're where people live and breathe." For Taylor and Quay2c, the multi-disciplinary practice he co-directs, good architecture is organic; it learns from the history of a site, using or re-using historical elements in the design and construction either through recycling actual materials or making historical allusions. Thus the narrative of a building or area's past is woven into its present.
This approach is evident in every aspect of 2c Kings Grove in Peckham, south London, where Taylor and his partner, the artist Julia Manheim, have fashioned a former milk depot into an artist's studio, an architects' office, a huge living, reception and meeting space, and a home. On top of that, literally, they have built three separate apartments, collectively known as Quay House.
Taylor and Manheim bought the old milk depot from Southwark Council in 1998, and over the next few yearstackled the first phase of conversion. With a tiny budget, recycling materials was not just an ethical priority but an economic necessity. They retained the original roof trusses and later re-used the corrugated steel panels from the roof as internal wall cladding; all the internal doors were salvaged from the building; and the original cold store has been largely retained, fitted out as a meeting room and library, withelements of its original use (such as its cork-lined, concrete ceiling) still ondisplay.
New elements included three red cedar clapboard "beach huts" above the old cold store. They form discrete spaces upstairs to sleep, bathe or watch television in, and are accessed by a galvanised steel walkway that rises from the central, open reception area.
What Taylor and Manheim have created is, in essence, a city barn conversion, using materials in imaginative ways, mixing industrial urbanity with seaside playfulness and creating a unique living and working space.
Open House hopes
Having been given a preview of these three houses, I am reminded of what Victoria Thornton, founding director of Open House, recently wrote: "Experiencing a building in the flesh - inside and out, can help you understand it, assess it, in a way you never could from a picture. If Open House can get Londoners to care passionately about their city and its future buildings, we will really have achieved something."
