Robust and flexible, light and charming
Featherstone Young Architects for Glendalough Associated SA
Contract value: £1.6m. GIA: 720m2
This mixed-use development is on a former industrial site surrounded by residential properties. The design manipulates form and materials to reflect this changing history. It provides photography studios, an artist’s studio and two flats, with a two-storey house for the owner to the rear, tucked under a folded green roof and built around an enchanting courtyard.
The studios are faced in oxidised steel panels cut with the perforated pattern found on the back of Waddington’s playing cards, which were once made on the site. A projecting timber clad room at the top of the building echoes the hoisting box common on older industrial buildings.
The project has made the absolute maximum out of a confined site with a building which is robust and flexible, light and charming showing how excellent architecture is often crafted out of the most unpromising context.
See other winners in the RIBA Regional Awards 2015 – London