In the jumble of the hilly end of town, we worked with and within the history of the place. The perimeter is a precise container that accommodates a plastic response. A stable and solid base is extended into an uncertain and slippery top. Emerging from the hinged corner are three splaying strips. The first band holds domestic and service spaces, edged by a curved wall that thickens for a concealed stair. The second is a bending and tapering living space that opens selectively side to side, and rises up to the north to hold the city centre in its gaze.
The third is a terrace with a curved zinc clad back overlooking the city and completing a subtle urban pattern of an oval ‘hollow’. This is made by a foreground of low building before the dramatic towers of the city extrude upward. The form of the penthouse is intentionally mute and sculptural, a tough response to a robust environment. The experience of the apartment is by contrast smooth, calm, elastic; promoting a unique blend of urban immediacy and overview.
One of the most satisfying parts of the job for us....
- that people found it suggestive, playful, mysterious and tried to read things into it, to liken it to analagous forms... a cat sunning itself on a rock, an athletic figure craning its neck to see the city, a suit of armour in a tough place, a creature inhaling, a solo trumpet in a chorus of brick warehouses...
- that it was contemporary AND contextual
- that it was so small and so public
- first time oneofourbuildings was in a musicclip, an advert , was used
for the opening of a theatre company's season- (a woman sang raised in a
cherry picker from the street below), the building's had a great
career...(!)
- This was a difficult site, not idyllic, without any natural beauty, not even on the ground- like a man-made cliff face, within a wild man-made geography. It gave us the freedom to play, embellish, reflect and interact with an unusual context and client. We felt (the beginnings of) a confidence to carry out work that is both precise and sculptural, alert to its surroundings.
Material Used :
1. Zinc – Cladding - Rheinzink
2. Blackbutt Timber – Floors - Bono Natural Finish
3. Abet Laminati – Cupboard Front Drawers – Lucia No 908
4. Pilkington Glass – Glass Counters and Splash Back – 12mm Seraphic Toughened Coloured Glass – Green Ice Pilkington SER 7128 and Grass Roots Pilkington SER 7136
