Hampstead Town House

Located amongst detached double-fronted Victorian villas and handsome stucco-fronted terraces, Hampstead Town House stands as somewhat of an anomaly. Constructed on a wedge-shaped piece of land left over from the orthogonal placement of 19th Century buildings around a tight bend in the road, the internal footprint of the house narrows to a width of 2.2m at the rear of the house with an overall ground floor footprint of just 30m2.

Built in 1970 by an Engineer and his wife, the house remained unaltered and their home for over 50 years. Externally, the house has a dynamic, monumental and gymnastic form which belies its modest scale: three stepped cantilevers over its five floors optimises the volume available and gives a Baronial sensibility to its modernist character. Internally, the house had been appointed a sense of the deluxe comprising timber linings and a marble-lined sunken bathroom.

Designed at a time when energy use and thermal performance was not understood as it is today, the house comprised an uninsulated concrete frame supporting an external brick leaf on large cantilevers that thermally bridge inside to out. The brief was to repair, renew and spatially reinvigorate the house for its new owners without comprising the integrity of the original architecture.

The existing floor plates were opened-up so as to enter the home in the middle of a triple height void stretching over 7.8m in height and with long views out the rear window and on into the tree canopies beyond. An internal spatial gymnastic act from lower ground to first floor that mimics the drama and poise of the external structural cantilever that stretches from the first floor to the third.

Down the stairs is a dining space which is twice as tall as it is wide and features a mirror-lined angled frieze that ricochets daylight and tree canopies back into the room. The kitchen is a further 3 steps down to the front.

The living space is located on the first floor, the main bedroom suite on the second and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the third accessed by the existing stair turret which has been insulated and re-lined in vertical timber cladding.