Reciprocal House – ADC

I first visited this property in early 2016 shortly after the house had changed hands. I accompanied the new owner and Patty Hopkins on the visit. In 1969, Michael Hopkins was a partner with Norman Foster and Patty was running her own projects, as well as raising their young family. She had become the project architect inadvertently as the practice was busy with other projects. In fact, my partner in life and work, Abigail Hopkins, had also accompanied her to some site visits, aged two. I was curious to see one of Patty’s earliest projects.

The new owner, a meticulously mannered lawyer, displayed a forensic appetite in the history and provenance of the house. He was very interested in pinpointing the origin of the house within its cultural and architectural setting, and later that week visited the Hopkins House which is around the corner to further consolidate his understanding of the significance of this seemingly small project within the architectural timeline of that very significant era. After all, this was only a modest Victorian cottage with an extension, tucked behind a row of terraces and only accessible via a narrow alleyway.

The original 1969 planning drawings were sketchy, a ploy to bamboozle the planners but arguably to convey the lightness of touch. A dilapidated double garage was to be demolished and a new lean-to glass extension was to be added to the entrance elevation and a large room was to be added on the garden side (labelled as the ‘music room’).

The music room extension very much drew upon the preoccupation of the work of the practice at the time to use simple, modern and off-the-shelf materials and techniques to create cost-effective and simple spaces that accommodated multiple and complex programmes. The lean-to patent glazing front extension and exposed internal and external blockwork in the music room extension probably leant on past projects, such as Creek Vean House (1967), and the exposed Metsec lattice beams (borrowed from the Eames House) would also have been the precursor to the roof structure utilised at the IBM Pilot Headquarters in Cosham which was completed in 1972 and later at the Hopkins House completed in 1975.

The original Foster Associates’ intervention was more than a mere extension. Internally, the Victorian cottage had also been altered to drag it into the 20th century alongside its very modern new extension. The cottage, in my view, was treated more as an experiment as there was also a need for the development of a more domestic language alongside the industrial language of the extension.

The Victorian cottage had been stripped of its Victorian features and in lieu, was furnished with things that we now take for granted. They included slim aluminium windows with a horizontal emphasis, an open-plan ground floor, a kitchen with an island, utilitarian bathrooms, internal Venetian blinds, square concrete pavers, open tubular handrails, fitted storage units and shelves, stage lighting, trench heating, frameless internal glass doors, bespoke glass dining table and so on…very much a machine for living.

In reality however, after nearly 50 years, the house was in a state of poor repair, and was reaching the end of its service life. Ironically, it was the solid Victorian elements that had fared the worse, and not the lightweight modern materials and building techniques employed in 1969.

At this juncture, Gianni Botsford Architects was appointed to oversee the transformation of the house into its new incarnation. The practice had been applauded on numerous occasions for innovative solutions to complex projects, and has in the past demonstrated its versatility in successfully handling multi layered briefs and extreme physical site constraints. Its approach, which I must admit was very bold, was to remove the Victorian house in its entirety and keep only the original music room extension, which was to become the architectural chrysalis for the new project.

The new addition occupies a similar footprint as the original Victorian house but is significantly larger in floor area. This is mainly as a result of a new basement floor but also a second floor that has been ingeniously added in what one can perceive as a modern interpretation of an Arts and Crafts mansard roof.

On the ground floor, the brief is pared down to its minimum. This new open-plan space comprises the living area (in the original retained extension), kitchen island, dining, cloakroom and a feature spiral staircase, which penetrates both upwards and downwards to the other levels of the house. Wayfinding in its simplest form.

The first floor contains the children’s bedroom and a family bathroom accessed off a generous landing set around the spiral stair. Strategic pocket doors allow the opening up of the rooms to each other and the landing when privacy is less of a concern.

The ‘attic’ floor is earmarked for the parents with a modest bedroom and a bathroom accessed off the landing. Pocket doors are again used to good effect to keep the floor plan open most of the time. The concrete slab above the spiral stair is pierced with a circular hole and openable skylight, allowing light to bounce (like a light tube) off the sculptural and reflective brushed aluminium balustrades of the stair deep down into the centre of the house.

The basement houses a music practice area and can also be used as a cinema room or play den for a growing family. Two lightwells allow daylight and natural ventilation into the basement and, with its three-metre ceiling heights, any sense of being below ground is convincingly negated.

In contrast to the ‘off-the-shelf’ approach of the original extension, the new addition is highly bespoke and sophisticated, yet equally spartan in appearance. A sign of the times perhaps due to the enhancement of building regulations and energy costs, but also a conscious decision by the architect to acknowledge and complement the original extension by using a limited palette of materials (albeit different, but reciprocal all the same).

The substructure mainly comprises continuous concrete piles to form the outer retaining walls of the basement with an inner leaf of exposed blockwork as a nod to the walls of the original extension on the ground floor. This visually links the basement with the ground floor, adding to the sense of seamless flow between different floors and spaces.

A gravity defying and minimal concrete superstructure forms the backbone of the house. The top two floors are supported by four concrete columns on the ground floor and a single concrete fin wall along the western edge of the cloak area. This also provides lateral stability in the north-south axis to both the new and existing parts. The blockwork walls of the original extension, in conjunction with the stiff concrete columns of the new part, reciprocally stabilise the house in the east-west direction.

Despite large areas of glazing on the upper floors, the bedrooms and bathrooms all have uninterrupted long – and more intimate short – distance views of the surrounding setting and landscape. Internally, occupants are not aware of the strategic external perforated aluminium screens, which act as both shading and veils to direct views and protect privacy. The architect carried out extensive modelling and research with more than 35 maquettes built to test the optimum view/privacy ratio, which helped compose the final built form.

Internally, the finishes have been conceived with extreme rigour, are exquisitely detailed, and meticulously executed. The floor finish throughout is a concrete screed (the same mix as the structural concrete) that has been ground to expose the aggregate and then sealed. This is ‘off the shelf’ terrazzo, perhaps continuing the ethos of using an industrial material and process out of context (similar to the use of the Metsec lattice beams in the 1969 extension).

The ceilings and walls are exposed concrete and finished to a very high standard. The window and door frames are all silver anodised aluminium. The external profiled perforated screens, the main stair, internal sliding doors, fitted storage units, kitchen and bathroom units are all bespoke aluminium fabrications, and made in east London by a local company. Aluminium has been used extensively for all the tactile elements of the house and to very good effect. This restrained palette of materials has created a house which is both calm and serene.

The sense of tranquility when I first entered the house was very real and palpable.

It should be a given these days, but sustainability is also very quietly at the heart of this project. The house is well insulated and airtight. It uses an air source heat pump for heating and has eliminated the use of gas on site. Passively, it benefits from solar gain in the winter when the surrounding trees are barren, and from natural shading in the summer when the surrounding trees are in full leaf. Openable windows and an openable rooflight over the spiral stair aid natural ventilation throughout the year. Green roofs, low water usage measures, and grey water recycling are also in place.

More significantly, the exposed concrete ceilings and walls not only eliminate the need for unnecessary additional finishes, but their thermal mass acts a heat sink, modulating and moderating the internal temperature curves in response to undulating external temperatures. When used correctly, this measure will help negate cooling requirements and reduce heating loads and therefore CO2 emissions further.

Externally, the landscaping is relatively calm as well. Of note, is the change in hue and texture of the ground-floor terrace immediately outside the original 1969 extension. Here, a red brick is used as paving, which then also forms a continuous bench delineating the boundary between the hard and soft landscaping of the garden. The brickwork is laid and pointed as immaculately as the other finishes in the house.

Initially, one might question the architect’s decision to depart from the minimal palette, but it was explained that the bricks were all reappropriated from the original Victorian house – described as ‘embodied memory’. This further reinforces the notion of reciprocity between the original house, the 1969 extension and the new house. A restrained palette of materials, an exposed and honest structure, and the celebration of modernity all complement the memory of the original extension. Distinct angular elevations, sloping roof and shading profiles, internal geometric quality, and the intricate and inventive interweaving of space and programme also evoke memories of the original cottage.

In this project, Gianni Botsford Architects has added a new layer in the evolving history of UK architecture, challenging and taking head-on some core beliefs about our collective approach to historic buildings, whether from the 1860s or the 1960s. They say less is more, but in this instance, Gianni Botsford has convincingly demonstrated that a little reciprocity can also go a long way.