Remaking history
Era-crossing drama at a Victorian townhouse in west London
In London, Victorian houses live multiple lives. Families move in and out, architects add extensions, or in the case of this townhouse in Bayswater, developers see potential for more drastic renewal. Behind the preserved façade, the old house, a victim of too many clumsy alterations, was totally rebuilt as a modern house. The rooms to the front maintain Victorian proportions, yet step further inside and you’ll find a huge wall of glazing, a lift, and a new lowerground level. The challenge for Nick Hill and Kam Bava, the two architects called in to work on the project’s interior (the shell was created earlier by London-based studio Pitman Tozer), was to find a way of naturally bridging new and old elements.
The architects first met while working for David Chipperfield on London’s Hotel Café
Royal (W*177), a renovation project that brought continuity to the hotel behind three era-crossing façades in Piccadilly. Hill was an associate director, and it was Bava’s first job after university. The project team were ‘almost monastic in their dedication’, the pair recall, the experience made all the more intense by the tiny site office. They refer to Chipperfield’s ‘scenographic approach’, which seeks to settle architecture in its context, with a minimalism achieved by applying classical rules to contemporary design.
Hill and Bava were also together at Witherford Watson Mann architects, where they worked on the Courtauld Institute of Art, another warren of rooms tucked behind a historic façade, needing to be rearranged and smoothed out. They agree that their working chemistry is a mix of shared background and personality. ‘I think with the prior experience of Hotel Café Royal and the Courtauld, in our approach to old buildings we were on the same page from the beginning – how and where to be respectful, and where not,’ says Hill.
They applied the rules they learnt working on London’s historical architecture to this essentially modern house, reimagining its history to set the ‘scenography’. After all, while it’s a residential property, at more than 6,500 sq ft, the six-level house is closer in scale to a public building.
One rule was to link the high-ceilinged, airy rooms with intermediary spaces layered with material and texture – like the Georgian architecture of William Chambers for the Courtauld, where rooms are linked by narrow panelled corridors. Another rule was to make subtle changes in architraves and skirting heights depending on the status of the room, and to suggest the journey through architectural time from the historical front of the house to the more modern rear.
‘Having set up some of those rules, in other places it was appropriate to break them and do something slightly more joyous and free,’ says Bava. For example, a light pink dressing room leads through to a master bathroom lined with Bardiglio and Cipollino marble inspired by a Josef Hoffmann bathroom at the Stoclet Palace in Brussels.
Weaving character and history through interior architecture in a contemporary building is a rare skill. On top of this, working with their client being the developer, Chris Bodker of Bodker and Co, the architects had to design the house for an unknown
user – though at its price point, they did have an idea as to the type of person it may be, and that the house would probably be a second home, or a London base.
‘It shares that problem with hotels; you’re trying to create something more specific than the ubiquitous international lounge,’ says Hill. ‘You have to invent things in which to ground it. It’s riffing on the idea of a London townhouse, but also adapted to a more modern way of living.’
The lower-ground floor, for example, features an open lounge area that could be a gym, a yoga studio or even a recording studio. It was a challenge to design because of the required flexibility. Hill and Bava chose flamed and brushed granite skirting, bronze details and end-grain oak-block flooring to suggest a sort of luxurious durability, while a cool subterranean feel is softened by an outdoor space that brings down daylight.
While the house could suit multiple users and uses, there is plenty of intimacy and charm. At the end of the garden, Hill and Bava designed the architecture and interior of a compact annexe. It artfully combines rustic features with modern elements, such as galvanised steel window frames, and hides a secret garden of ferns and palms. While the townhouse pays homage to London’s great buildings, this little addition is a pure escape from it all. * kbava.com; nickhillarchitects.com