Levels Ten + Eleven

The reordering of this canalside apartment announces a simple, Japanese-inspired departure from its mundane location within a large residential development. The clients’ apartment overlooking the Paddington Basin felt like a resultant space; a by-product of urban massing and volume unit production.

The ornate timber detailing and craft found in the traditional decorative English narrowboats along the canal profoundly influenced the language for the proposal. This in turn paralleled traditional Japanese shoji, a translucent boundary condition formed of lightweight, often movable screens.

Rather than struggle against the building's existing curtain walling system, the proposal embraces it and uses it as a reference for a bespoke timber-lined grid, the lines of which naturally connect the apartment to outside.

These simple adaptations to the form and layout including a new staircase between the two floor levels have transformed these two disparate levels into one connected whole. A concrete pier links both levels — forming a balustrade that wraps around a Dracaena tree the clients have owned for 21 years — creating an accentuated and personal experience.

Client

Private

Completion

2017

Location

Paddington, London

Images

Simone Bossi