Established in 2002, the Amar-Franses & Foster-Jenkins Trust provides scholarships, bursaries, and more recently subsidized rent and high-quality accommodation to post-graduate students in the arts and sciences. In their latest undertaking, the Trust appointed Selencky Parsons to convert a large, detached dwelling within a North London conversation area into post-graduate student accommodation, complete with an opera rehearsal space in the rear garden.
Called Bravura, the dwelling is the Trust’s first acquired property for transformation. The existing house, dating from the beginning of the twentieth century, was in poor condition although it did retain some of its distinctive arts and crafts features such as ornate timber panelling, terrazzo flooring and decorative plaster mouldings.
Comprising seven ensuite study bedrooms, an extensive living accommodation, and a new extension at the rear of the building, the architects were keen to honour the spirit of the existing arts and crafts home by employing a limited palette of high-quality, robust materials, along with simple and honest detailing.
Grey handmade brick is used internally and externally along with external precast concrete, bronze anodized aluminium windows, and extensive birch ply timber panelling for the interior.
Internally, a new route was established through the building, resulting in a direct east-west axis that runs from the front entrance of the building to the rehearsal room in the rear garden.
The living accommodation, directly off the main axis, offers a kitchen/diner, a large living room, mezzanine study space and sunken dining room beneath. Students bedrooms are contained on the two upper floors.
The Opera Rehearsal Room is a jewel-like pavilion incorporated into the rear garden of the house. Its unique form is a direct response to acoustic requirements, planning constraints and geometry of the existing house. The architects worked together with acclaimed acoustic designers Sound Space vision to set the acoustic design parameters of the space. During the process, several geometric forms were explored before settling on the folded rectangular volume. The asymmetric internal volume is ideal for the acoustic brief of minimising parallel internal surfaces.
To ensure noise pollution both into and out of the space is eradicated, the building includes an inner and outer layer of structure kept separate to avoid noise transfer. Fabric acoustic panels in a soft blue-grey provide a subtle backdrop to the space and act to a sorb the mid to high frequencies. The black concert piano is complemented by simple black pendant lights with exposed wires.
The primary structure of the building is a series of timber glulam frames acoustically separated and insulated from the bronze external shell. The fins within the bronze cladding provide a visual connection between the nature of the interior and exterior. The base of grey bricks with a Flemish bond was chosen to allow recess brick details and to the end elevation a brick privacy screen over the bathroom window.
