Highbury Loft is an apartment in a terraced house in London which was transformed into a bright, open loft over three floors. The project reimagines the traditional Victorian house with large spatial elements inserted into the large spaces to subdivide it into different areas. The purpose is to create a home that is exceptionally social, made for entertaining both at day and night, but at the same time also a retreat, providing a feeling of contemplative calm and privacy…
Highbury Loft is an apartment in a terraced house in London which was transformed into a bright, open loft over three floors. The project reimagines the traditional Victorian house with large spatial elements inserted into the large spaces to subdivide it into different areas. The purpose is to create a home that is exceptionally social, made for entertaining both at day and night, but at the same time also a retreat, providing a feeling of contemplative calm and privacy.
The design of the apartment aims to rethink the traditional layout of a terraced house, where you have one front and one rear room on each level, and a narrow, enclosed staircase. In Highbury Loft the plan layout is designed to make each level feel like one large space where you move around a central, beautifully crafted core, clad in teak. The three levels are visually connected through a custom made steel and wood staircase, which lets in a huge amount of light into all the spaces. The different spatial objects have different functions of connecting or separating spaces, and they all have their own unique character and materiality, such as the kitchen-bathroom core on the first floor, or the wardrobe-mirror core on the top floor.
The effect of a loft-like space is further enhanced through the use of a number of custom made items, such as the floor to ceiling doors, a contemporary interpretation of a classical column, massive fireproof glass screens and the elimination of normal thresholds such as architraves and door frames. The combined effect of these elements and details is a blurring of boundaries between rooms and floors.
The material palette was designed to give the apartment the atmosphere of a gallery or loft, rather than a normal home. The elements that make up the envelope of the spaces are either very dark or very bright, with different hues, tones and texture. For example, the floors are black and glossy, the walls are a very light blue and super matte. The bathroom ceiling is painted a dark, chocolate brown in a matte finish to match the dark brown quarry tiles which are unusually rustic and textured for a bathroom, creating a very earthy feeling. This material palette allows the house to feel both dark, moody and intimate but at the same time bright and fresh, depending on the time of the day and the use of lighting.
