Celebrity architect at war with neighbours over £10m ‘ bunker’
neiGhBOUrs locked in a battle with a top architect want to stop her building a £10million iceberg home because the design is too ‘ creative and interesting’.
sophie hicks – a former fashion editor at Tatler – claims her subterranean property, to be topped with a glowing glass box, will be a thing of modern beauty.
But the 58-year- old’s opponents say the ‘horrid’ structure ‘will be an eyesore for generations’. One disgruntled couple argued: ‘We do not all want to live next door to the unique or the contemporary.’
The area in london’s smart holland Park lies near notting hill, with leafy streets luring celebrities such as David and Victoria Beckham, elton John and robbie Williams.
Miss hicks – the mother of models edie and Olympia campbell – began working as an architect in 1994 designing flagship stores for fashion houses Paul smith and chloe in the capital. she paid £880,000 for the sliver of land at a fiercelyfought auction eight years ago.
she then won planning permission to dig a two- storey basement or ‘iceberg’ home, described as such because the majority of it is underground.
The street level ‘glowing glass cube’, measuring 16ft square, will merely contain a staircase down to the basement house, as well as a lift.
Below ground are four spacious bedrooms, a huge openplan living area and even a large swimming pool on the bottom floor, according to one sketch. The size of the sprawling property will be roughly equivalent to four times that of a typical three-bed semi.
But a 1960s contract still potentially gives the seven neighbouring residents and flat owners rights to limit development on the long, thin plot. Miss hicks’s opponents say they can stop the development on aesthetic grounds. They have also complained that four sycamore trees would have to be felled.
high court judge Mark Pelling yesterday heard arguments over whether such an objection is ‘ reasonable’. Miss hicks claims the neighbours are bitter she beat them to buying the ‘weed-choked’ plot as they had planned to turn the area into a communal garden.
leading the opposition are psychologist Maria letemendia, 69, and partner Dr Michael McKie, 74. Mrs letemendia’s barrister Jonathan Karas Qc told the high court that while some might be excited by the design, ‘we do not all want to live next door to the creative and interesting, or to the unique or to the contemporary or the unconventional, or next to buildings which share none of the design language of the building in which one lives, nor next to gently glowing boxes’.
They continued: ‘While tastes may differ, it really does not stand scrutiny to say that the aesthetic reason for refusal for this application is unreasonable, that no reasonable neighbour could take the view that they did not want this development next to them.’ Miss hicks’s barrister Philip rainey Qc said Dr McKie had openly told Miss hicks at the auction of the plot that ‘he would refuse to accept and would oppose any development’ there. But the chairman of the management company of another nearby block of flats, ross Yealland, accused Miss hicks of being a ‘rich greedy developer’. he said she was clearly happy to wreck a ‘fantastic view’ with a ‘horrid translucent white glass structure’ which ‘will be an eyesore for generations’. The hearing continues.
‘Rich greedy developer’