>A015 Dartmouth Row

A quietly-radical reimagining of a large Victorian town house in the first ‘considered’ street to be completed in Blackheath, London.

This far reaching project unites bold interventions with fine detailing, the Victorian with the melded-modern – all whilst demonstrating a rare integrity of narrative and process. The offered-to consciously in conversation with the received. Additions are expressed through layering, grafting-to and announced repair. Careful subtraction over the entrance, living spaces and throughout upper accommodation provides a discourse between how we used to and how we now wish to live.

A total architectural output and one that belies its domestic scale, covering a spectrum from that which we touch and use (such as a door handle) to that which envelops us both internally and externally – allowing a family to live a little better.

A dining table, a coffee table, a kitchen table, two dressing tables and six bedside tables. A desk, four beds, several wardrobes, twenty-two door-knobs, a drinks unit with drop-down bar-top, a toy box with integrated steps and bench – and more that evades easy naming. The corpus of joinery as a whole is characterised by a rarely-seen level of craftsmanship.

Inventions and interventions were related rigorously to the original fabric – notably a pyramid stretcher brick prominent in the street-facing facade. The pyramid’s form is used in two ways. In its graphical manifestation, it is flattened and appears as a cross on furniture and other elements. In relief, as a further abstraction of the cross motif, it appears as a single, slanted line rendered in notched, vertical slats.

These motifs recur rhythmically throughout the house and the joinery, and in smaller items like fireplace hearths and ironmongery backplates. And they feature in the garage and in the garden, drawing together the internal and external.

Architects Journal Architecture Awards:  Finalist