10 Redmans Road, Whitechapel, London E1 3BY
Description of The Project
This project, for which I acted as both architect and client (along with my wife and two daughters), is a 97 sq m two-bedroom new build house on lower ground and ground floors, built on open land just south of Whitechapel High Street, in the Stepney Green Conservation Area of London. The site area is 79 sq m. Historic maps suggest that the site was some form of open yard and workshop from the early part of the 19th century, although the site included part of what was once the rear garden of 208 Jubilee Street.
The site is a slightly distorted rectangle, with the long axis aligned east to west, with the north elevation along Redmans Road. One of the attractions of the site for us, therefore, was the open aspect and the sense of the sky to the south, away from the road, looking towards the rear gardens of the listed houses along Jubilee Street.
The project offered a fascinating opportunity to create a dwelling from a leftover scrap of undeveloped urban land. The clues to the design lay in the site context of a conservation area; the desire to create privacy and seclusion away from a prominent street location; ensuring good orientation for light and the sun; addressing the open sky over the gardens of adjacent properties to the south; and the desire to create a sense of a primary space as a focus for the house that appeared to be experiencedly greater than the modest scale of the house – what Gaston Bachelard has called ‘intimate immensity’. This idea of a capacious domestic interior is the found idea for this site; the house emerges from this idea, and the subsidiary spaces are structured around it. Its volume also defines the presence of the building externally on the street.
A long, monumental wall of historic second-hand stock brickwork to match the brickwork in the adjacent terrace of Grade II listed houses in Jubilee Street establishes the building’s position along Redmans Road, and in the conservation area. The new wall provides a protective boundary wall and the formal threshold for the new home. Behind this wall, the internal spaces are orientated to the south, with the road and dense city housing to the north experientially removed from the interior presence of the house. The house thus creates its own domain, remote from the intense city, an intimately immense space founded on light, the sky and the views of trees.
The building signifies its presence discreetly within and above this wall: an opening on the eastern end of the site provides the entry into the building via a side passage. Perforated brickwork adjacent to this entrance gate, inset with bespoke solid glass blocks, provides light to the internal staircase down to the lower level. The main living space is signified by the glazed lantern light sitting above the stock brick boundary wall. The backdrop of mature trees and other vegetation all around the site creates the impression of a hidden lodge-like building in a garden setting, in contrast to the robust urbanism of the surrounding streets.
A gate in the street wall opens into the side passage, leading to the front door, which opens directly into the main living space. This creates a liminal space between the house and the street, providing a double layer of privacy and security for the occupants. The building has a ‘L’ shaped plan, laid out around a two-level courtyard located in the south-west quadrant of the site. On the upper level a terrace provides external space off the living areas. On the lower level, a landscaped courtyard serves the two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.
The lozenge shape of the lantern light maximizes the volume and light in the central section of the main living space, whilst tapering out towards the boundaries to the east and the west. The ‘splays’ thereby created to the north-east and the north-west respond to the arc of the sun in the summer months, bringing in sunlight from very early in the morning to late in the evening. The lantern light also allows in early morning low-level winter light from the south-east. The structure of the lantern light is a timber diagrid, supported off slim steel posts, giving the sense that the diagrid is floating on light.
The trapezoid geometry emphasizes the east-west orientation of the main space. The lantern is enclosed with a structural glass skirt. The level of translucency in the glazing is such that views in are prevented from the flats opposite, whilst ghosted views are provided outwards.
The full-height windows that serve the living space and kitchen can be opened up by two sets of sliding doors that merge with one another when closed. When open, with no corner post, the internal living space flows out onto the external balcony.
A simple palette of materials enhances the spatial feel of the house and allows it to predominate. In the main living space, white painted walls allow the light from the diagrid lantern over to bounce around, the timber of the diagrid containing the space within this light. The pale grey resin floor – laid out in one continuous flowing surface – reflects the sunlight coming in from the south facing windows. A timber alcove at the end of the living space creates a shallow inset wall for repose (as well as providing a hidden cloak cupboard). Structural glass balustrades to the staircase and to the external terrace provide a minimal visual intrusion. Downstairs, a timber floor provides warmth to the bedrooms, supplemented by the white stained timber of the joinery.
To enhance the garden setting, and for reasons of sustainability and biodiversity, the roof to the lantern light is sedum. When viewed from the upper levels of the adjacent houses along Jubilee Street, this also helps to provide a sense of the continuation of the neighbours’ gardens and recalls the previous open character of the site.
