© Kilian O'Sulivan
- Architects: Hayhurst and Co.
- Location: London Borough of Hackney, UK
- Area: 99.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2015
- Photographs: Kilian O'Sulivan, Courtesy of Hayhurst and Co
© Kilian O'Sulivan
Garden House is a new home, studio and gallery under a ‘hanging-basket’ roof for Whitaker Malem: the artist and costume-maker duo behind works by Allen Jones, fashion designers Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen and numerous film costumes including Harry Potter, Batman and Wonderwoman.
3D
On the site of a single-storey workshop they self-built in the mid-1990s, the clients wished to create a new home and studio which maximised the space and natural light available within their tight, north-facing site behind Victorian terraced housing in Hackney’s de Beauvoir Conservation area, London’s East-End
© Kilian O'Sulivan
Built within the original brick party walls they shared with their neighbours on all sides, the design was devised as three different roof pitches to create a ‘form of best fit’ – a negotiation between maximising internal accommodation and protecting adjacent residential amenity. Garden House sets a model of how to retrofit buildings and maximise residential accommodation in sensitive inner city areas.
© Kilian O'Sulivan
The building is entered through a winter garden with a large skylight and mirror-polished stainless steel reveals which ricochet light around the entrance, distorting the scale of the space and the fall of light. This leads on a connected set of living spaces lit by natural light through sculpted shafts from the roof.
© Kilian O'Sulivan
On the ground floor, storage and display for the owners’ art collection is provided in the form of bespoke white steel shelves that continue into a steel staircase that floats away from the wall, allowing natural light to pass behind it into the house.
© Kilian O'Sulivan
The upper floor is lined with oak panelling to provide a rich environment for the studio, which is also used as a fitting room for clients and as a gallery space for private exhibitions of the owners’ work. The space is naturally lit with a large top light and storage and desk space built for sewing machines and embroidery areas.
Section
The roof is a bespoke hanging garden formed from lapped, stainless-steel profiles hung over a GRP membrane. Topped with this unique and visually dramatic ‘hanging’ garden, Garden House provides a prototype for brownfield development that offers dense, adaptable, urban living.
© Kilian O'Sulivan
Detail
© Kilian O'Sulivan
Sig Nordal 