about

A late Victorian location townhouse in East London is transformed by Dedraft into a modern home with an emphasis on light, materials, minimalism and quality of space.

This radical transformation of a late Victorian house in Hackney, elevates a standard period property into a modern home with an emphasis on minimalist architecture, light, use of materials and quality of space. The architecture studio behind it, East London based Dedraft, took on the challenge to redesign the building’s interior and add an extension to the structure that was previously divided into two apartments.

The clients – an investor and a singer – bought the property to create their dream family home, so the focus of the commission was not about ‘simply gaining more’ in terms of square footage, stress the architects. The four level interior was therefore modernised and thoroughly rethought, highlighting a sense of space, natural light and design and material quality.

To create height and a more airy, light feel to the rear part of the house we dug down a metre and removed part of the first floor. This allowed us to create a void at the back of the house with a ceiling height of 7m and a mezzanine looking down from the formal dining room to the kitchen.

Room heights:

Rear of kitchen/ back of house: 7m

Front of Kitchen. 2.5m

Formal living / dining room: 2.9m

Bedroom / master ensuite: 2.7m

Snug: 2.5m

The front snug was kept at the original height to make it more a cosy, tv watching room centred around the fireplace

The formal dining and living spaces retain the original Victorian fireplaces

We went to Belgium and handpicked the slabs of Caprino Bianco marble for the kitchen from Hullebusch

The flooring is from Belgian flooring company called Arbony, supplied in variable mix widths

Lighting provided by NYC light studio Apparatus and London local Michael Anastassiades

Poured concrete staircase – shuttered and built in situ

The original main staircase structure was retained, but was overclad with timber stairs provided by Arbony. We replaced the original spindle banister and traditional wooden handrail with a solid wooden continuation of the lower ground concrete staircase, with a routered line marking the handrail as a nod to what was there before

Bathroom fittings from Porter Bathrooms & Dornbracht

Rear Corten Cladding – was trickier to bring this to life than expected, given the structure is a relatively simple box, but not a product people use a lot in residential projects so it was hard to come by people willing to work on the project.

Sunken concrete courtyard – concrete was pumped in from a mixer truck on the street

Kitchen + Wardrobe joinery was built by McCormack Joiner

The pilates studio in the garden is available on request and at an additional cost.

Photographer: Richard Oxford

 

Tags:

More

save PDF