Space effect

London mansion in Mediterranean style

Passing the gallery

Text: Marina Volkova

A photo: Nerida Howard

Magazine: N6 (172) 2012

The design bureau sporadicSPACE recently implemented an unusual project in London: a building built under Queen Victoria turned into a kind of Mediterranean villa

The district of Belsize Park was still chosen by wealthy Londoners at the end of the 19th century. They ordered mansions in the Victorian style, many of which have survived to this day. One of them bought a young family who decided to settle in the capital. Spouses purchased the mansion at Lancaster Drive after the villa in Portugal and wanted the mansion to resemble a villa. With this unbanal task, they turned to architect Andries V Kruger (Andries V Kruger) from the sporadicSPACE bureau. Andries was accustomed to undertaking non-standard projects while still in the team of the famous English architect Norman Foster, with whom he worked for many years.

Andries decided to preserve the facades of the building. Everything else he completely redid. The building is five-story, it is penetrated through the staircase. It is a two-part: on the ground floor there is a modern plot, above it is a historical one, with Victorian decor. The premises are distributed around it. Andries replaced all communications by removing the wires in a technical box located next to the stairs. The author of the project compares it with the spine, the pivotal axis of the human body. The architect shifted all the floors, using a new framework of steel and wooden beams, and completely abandoned the internal partitions, making an open layout on all floors. Going into the house, you get on the so-called floor-reception. There is a living room divided into a TV area and a fireplace. If you go down to the floor below, you find yourself in the dining room, next to which is the kitchen. The relief of the site allowed to make them so low: it turns out that the street that the main facade of the house faces is exactly a level above the garden located behind the house. The dining room and kitchen (and a small breakfast area with it) also constitute a single space. Through high (more than seven meters) glass doors you can go out into the garden, where landscape designers made a cozy terrace. The kitchen is also separated from the garden by a transparent sliding door. In the summer, all doors open and actually live in nature. Upstairs are bedrooms. The whole floor is occupied by the master bedroom and their bathroom. They are also solved as a single space (at the entrance to the bathroom, in the wall, the partition is hidden, and if you really want, you can still close the bathroom). The most interesting thing here is a semicircular box trimmed with mirror panels. From the side of the bedroom it looks like a decorative element, and from the side of the bathroom there is a mosaic shower in it.

LEAVE ANSWER