Bradley Van Der Straeten Architects has produced a plywood and oak residence inside of a Stoke Newington coach house that was after the property of Anna Sewell, the writer of the Black Beauty novel.
Bradley Van Der Straeten was asked to refurbish the interior of the previous brick house in north London to accommodate a new two-bedroom residence.
The architects designed a pair of plywood and oak volumes, and slotted them within the existing brick shell of the old developing – a technique previously used for an infill residence in Spain and a rural Suffolk artwork studio.
The more substantial of the two volumes is clad in plywood and extends by way of the 3 storeys of the home, although a second oak volume sits in the base of the house and houses utility spaces. An entrance hall fills the void amongst the two structures.
“The idea was to do away with the notion of walls and doors and instead play with volumes and voids to articulate the space and the way light enters the residence,” explained studio co-founders George Bradley and Ewald Van Der Straeten.
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“All current interior walls and floors were eliminated to make way for two new sculptural volumes to be inserted into the constructing, one particular clad in oak and the other clad in plywood.”
“Plywood was chosen as the principle cladding material due to its strength and versatility, but also to give warmth and character to the spaces and to contrast with the white painted perimeter walls of the home,” they additional.
A ground-floor bedroom, elevated residing space and a mezzanine bedroom are all encased in sheets of plywood. Sliding timber doors conceal rooms, a boxy staircase and storage nooks inside the walls, offering the area a uniform visual appeal.
“The plywood volume has been created with chunky proportions and the same materials on each surface to make the stair and bedroom really feel like they have been carved out of a single piece of wood,” said the architects.
“The plywood volume also cleverly contains storage and bookcases in sudden places to maximise the use of every space within the developing.”
The double-height living space is lit by a four-metre-high arched window with an oak frame, which opens onto a little balcony overlooking the street.
A mezzanine bedroom is set towards the ceiling of the living area. It characteristics an inner balcony and pivoting flap window that open onto the space under.
This is the 1st venture by the Hackney studio, which was founded by Bradley and Van Der Straeten in 2011.
The English and Belgian duo met during their scientific studies and invested a 12 months travelling about Europe in a borrowed VW camper van just before opening their studio – an knowledge they said was a valuable lesson in residing in modest spaces and was a reference stage for the Stoke Newington project.
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Exploded axonometric diagram 
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