Not your average house, but a design for an art collector within the more than average affluence of Chelsea. The design is mindful of the street history and plays contextural games that politely front an interior arrangement that is distinctly pre-WWII: an entrance to the left for staff, a car bay in the centre and the owner’s entrance on the right (compare with Goldfinger’s house). The double height piano nobile (‘salon’) echoes the traditions of the Georgian London terrace house, but is clearly for entertainment, with a ‘small living room’ to one side and a concealed mezzanine library above. An attic storey is set behind a parapet — a retreat for hedonistic pleasures, with guest bedrooms and an outdoor ‘tropical hot-tub’ with planted courtyard. All this is faced in a sensuous red limestone.
Also see the Camden Arts Centre (p.206) and the Lisson Gallery (p.105).
The mosaic wrapped Ismaili Centre near South Kensington Station (Cromwell Gardens, SW7; Casson Condor, 1983) is an unusual piece of Modernism in the Islamic tradition — sounds awful, but it’s actually very good and in no way a pastiche of anything.
It sits as an island, scaled to nearby houses, chamfered
to give them daylight, with a top floor garden, with escape stairs at each corner and the content of the design strives for an Islamic spirit without obvious quotation. On the first floor is a large prayer hall and the roof has a delightful garden. (Often open for Open House.)
о This building at 60 Sloane Street SW3
3 was Stanton Williams’s first major job
(assisted by YRM; 1994). The challenge was to convert and extend an existing 1911 building of some character. The outcome is an elegant marriage of old and new, the latter betraying distinctly Catalonian architectural traits as it marries itself to the older five-storey block and integrates itself behind and above the two-storey wing, as if the old fagade had been ‘peeled back’. Retail content on the ground floor is about 3350 sq. m. and the offices above comprise about 7150 sq. m.
4 The Royal Court Theatre (Sloane Sq.; Haworth Tompkins, 2000), is a familiar exercise (like Hackney Empire) in updating a much-loved theatre without destroying the ambience of its distress. The theatre was rebuilt, new dressing rooms etc added, and — at basement level — the theatre punches through under the road and square to form a bar and restaurant. Worth a visit. Also compare with Allies & Morrison’s exercise at Chelsea Art School.