Camden Mews
October 31, 2008
The initial brief was to design a contemporary family home for a film director, his wife and their two children on the site of a former mews cottage in Camden, London. The planning authority insisted on the retention of the existing building so the brief was to strip it out and extend it in line with local planning policy. In the end it was easier for the contractor to demolish the entire building and rebuild it with the facade exactly as it was in line with the existing planning permission.
The limiting factor for the project was the size of the existing building and the initial concept was to make the spaces appear larger than they were. On top of this the existing Mews facade was listed as an important part of the street elevation. It was the only remaining facade that resembled a traditional mews house.
The ground floor was designed as an open plan family room with a kitchen pod in the centre- an extract from contemporary Dutch housing plans from the late 1990s. A central light well passes through a glass section of the first floor flooding the kitchen with natural light. The rear facade was entirely removed at ground floor and replaced with full height glass and sliding door units creating a seamless link between the inside and the outside and enhancing the feeling of space and spaciousness.
You progress from the ground floor up to the bedrooms on the first floor. There is a change as one move up from the ground floor and the space closes in. The journey up the stairs is prompted by views across into the bedrooms- this visual link serves not only to link the children’s bedrooms but also it is an attempt to break down the feeling of enclosure. Although the rooms are small, their walls are broken down by glazed slots allowing views into different parts of the house.
The house plays with the idea of duality. There is a visual duality- the house looks like a traditional mews but has been gutted internally to make way for a series of contemporary spaces. There is also a spatial duality- from the street the house looks very small, yet when you enter the space seems huge. It is a big room dressed up as a tiny house.
Due to planning constraints the predominant material used was stock brick with frameless glass openings coupled with a full glazed extension. Internally, the color palette was kept very refined- the pale limestone flooring, the white skimmed walls, the Douglas fir stair treads and kitchen worktop all contrasted sharply with a splash of spray lacquered lipstick red on the rear wall of the kitchen, a red glass splash-back and black satin spray lacquered kitchen units.
There were many highs and lows during the project , Traditionally the planning process is meant to take 8 weeks. It took two years to obtain planning permission for this scheme. Planning permission was originally obtained by another architect after which 3W made several large scale amendments that were eventually approved. Although getting planning permission for the scheme in a conservation area on a building that is listed as being of significant importance along the street was a huge achievement!
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