City Approach Penthouses

Expanding the use of an historical building in a Conservation Area

Architecture

Islington, London, UK

Area: 870m2

A project in the Moorfields Conservation Area to create a roof addition on an Edwardian building, we sought to complement the existing building and broader street scene in our response. Conceived to win planning approval while introducing additional height to the extension, we were able to increase the number of units and interior space, without having a visible impact from the street.

The end-result was four rooftop apartments with private terraces and conservatories, wrapped in a continuous performative metal skin that unfolds itself over a curtain wall. Not only does the skin provide privacy, shade and protection to the apartment units, the design disguises the additional space created from the street view.

En cours...

Restricted by strict viewing constraints, the extension is stealth for pedestrians whilst becoming a landscape for the highflying new residents.

The City Approach which was meant to mark the entry to the buzzing City of London now stands as a doorway to the Silicon roundabout. The project for this site of many paradoxes is simultaneously invisible and a focus point, historically aware and stylistically detached.

The building’s skin is alluringly evocative of the existing building as its opaque termination whilst the project is internally in fact mostly about openness.

The extension proposed will provide 4 luxurious rooftop apartments with their own private terrace and conservatory.

In addition to the sustainable benefits of wrapping the façade with a secondary skin, the faceted form responds to the rhythm of the existing ornamental dutch gables while simultaneously homogenising the two additional floors into one volume to create a striking backdrop to the original structure.