Canaway Fleming Architects has completed an “unashamedly modern” house in a north London conservation region, featuring rooms that frame a series of tiny courtyards .
The two-storey Courtyard House is positioned behind a 17th-century cottage in North Finish, Hampstead. But in contrast to its historic and traditional neighbour, the residence was created as a series of easy white-rendered blocks.
According to London-based Canaway Fleming, the intention was to create a building that is sensitive to its context, but that also offers a “calm, serene good quality” to the residents – a couple with a younger little one.
It is the latest in a series of contemporary houses finished in the area – a notoriously hard location to win preparing permission – following a timber and stone building by Stanton Williams and a fabric-clad artist’s home by Guard Tillman Pollock.
“Any intervention on the web site had to be dealt with incredibly meticulously to respect the current historic structures and the sensitivity conservation location as a entire,” explained architects Martin Canaway and Nick Fleming.
Related story: Stretched material hides the windows and balconies of an artist’s Hampstead house
“The form and supplies of the house are deliberately homogenous to supply a sculptural quality that responds to the changes in light in the course of the day and seasons,” they mentioned.
The strategy was organised all around a pair of mature trees, which allowed courtyards to be developed at the south and east corners of the plot. Small terraces have been then additional at the two remaining corners, whilst a fifth courtyard was developed inside of the volume of the residence.
Only one of the building’s two storeys is located over ground. It is made up of a living and dining room and a separate kitchen, each of which open out to diverse courtyards. There is also a small examine that faces a courtyard on one particular side and a staircase on the other.
All rooms on this floor attributes straightforward furnishings, with white surfaces and cupboards, and pale wooden flooring. Colour is launched infrequently, with examples like an artwork hanging in the kitchen.
The larger basement storey wraps around the sunken internal courtyard, permitting lots of light to filter into a master bedroom suite. Three smaller bedrooms are also located on this floor, illuminated by skylights overhead.
“The basement rooms are manufactured light and airy by the introduction of double and triple-height lightwells that offer natural ventilation and daylight, and primarily breathe existence into the rooms,” mentioned the architects.
“In addition these courtyard spaces are organized to supply sudden and lengthy views, making the property feel incredibly spacious regardless of getting, in massive, portion subterranean.”
The architects specified a effectively-insulated reinforced-concrete structure, providing a relaxed setting inside the residence and making certain that residents won’t hear or truly feel the movements of London Underground trains working close by.
Photography is by James Brittain.
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