MILE END ROAD

The significant refurbishment, reconfiguration and re-building of a top floor apartment in Mile End, East London.

The project ambition was to re-imagine the proportions, arrangement and flow of this cramped apartment. We sought to rationalise the layout by subdividing the space into equal quarters which allowed us to define the four living functions of washing, dining, relaxing and sleeping. The form of the building and undulating roof are in part determined by the angle and path of the sun while easily sourced materials assembled and finished in a considered way gave us a simple yet striking aesthetic.

This category - home transformation - is particularly relevant to our ethos as a practice as it includes the reinvention of existing spaces which often pose more challenges, but, have many benefits - reduced building material, knitting into the fabric of a place and reinvigorating the lost soul of a building. This kind of architectural layering requires the careful identification of the

merits of the existing in order to produce a successful summation of old and new. When the client first took us around the original dilapidated apartment we saw potential in this forgotten rooftop and wanted to build on what it once was, even though there was little perceived visual beauty in the existing we see beauty and usefulness in the process of re-appropriation.