Project Name: London Solar House / Location: Primrose Hill, London / Designer: Archi-Tectonics / Location: New York City / Architect of Record: AY Architects / Structural Engineer: AKTII / MEP: WSP London / Lighting Design: Lana Lenar / General Contractor: Philiam / Photography: Nick Kane
Tasked with renovating a century-old brick townhouse in the heart of London, New York City-based Archi-Tectonics turned the unique historic character of the existing two-story solid masonry structure into a design opportunity. The firm doubled the original size for a family of four and made it a modern home for modern living.
“The 2,250 square-feet London Solar House is designed with the notion that ‘small is beautiful,’ something that can be traced back to the early modernists of Europe and America who used this as a premise in their search for the most ergonomic and frugal housing unit,” the firm says.
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The firm’s solutions leaned towards what is just enough to live comfortably, but they maximized richness and complexity to create a four-dimensional interplay of spaces linked across two eras in time and intricately crafted with shifts in movement, perspective and materiality. The house’s manifold attachments to the adjacent structures and surrounding vegetation served as the guide for the project.
Archi-Tectonics left the original structure intact to maintain the largely opaque building edges and serve as the foundational base for the new intervention. It is treated as the structural core, off of which a multi-faceted roof extension with an additional story and other hovering projections emerges.
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“The intersection between the folded zinc-and-glass envelope and the densely packed program within generates several distinctly-formed apertures such as the pyramidal skylight in the kitchen, a glass slit in the living room exposing what used to be a narrow rear yard and a fully glazed window revealing the panoramic view of the streetscape below, framed by an old-growth tree,” the firm says. “The terrace at the roof level extends the kitchen and dining room toward the exterior and offers a moment of outdoor respite amidst the surrounding foliage and neighborhood roofscape.”
The roof is lined with fully integrated PV panels, creating an almost off-the-grid building with baseline electricity sufficient to run heat pumps, hot water supply, lighting, as well as a 13-kilowatt Tesla battery to charge an electric car.
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At the heart of the building is a custom-built, winding stair that connects the entrance floor with the double-height living area above and the open kitchen-and-dining on the topmost level. The organic and fluid geometry of this solid-steel helix form connects all public areas of the house in one continuous sweep, creating a sculptural element that permits daylight throughout the space. Here, density and richness condense together to create a singular object that is both extremely efficient and strikingly beautiful. The firm says the staircase demonstrates its ability to marry “design intelligence, manufacturing expertise and dynamic form-optimization to go beyond mere problem-solving.”
The sculptural elements coupled with the rich textures of the interiors are a deliberate departure from the typical strategy for compact dwellings, the firm says. Instead, high-contrast black raw wood cladding and cabinetry, textured stone surfaces and brass mosaics are highlighted by soft glowing light coves. Precious glass pendants elevate the atmosphere indoors, while complementing the organically shaped wood furniture and natural wool rugs.
This project is part of Archi-Tectonics’ series of broad explorations to create sustainable housing models for city-living, following 512 GW Townhouse, 497 Greenwich building and Blaak Tower, the firm says.
