The site at 2 Whites Grounds is located in the Bermondsey conservation area, a vibrant part of London close to London Bridge where the Shard and White Cube Bermondsey recently opened consolidating this central up and coming part of London.

The existing building is a five storey warehouse dating back to the end of the nineteen century with a distinctive character and a gable roof structure. The office has successfully negotiated planning permission for this roof structure where initial planning enquiries gave very few chances of development being permitted on this site. A thorough history and site analysis, which proved the existing roof resembled but was not actually the original structure, together with the bold contemporary design proposal, paved the way to planning permission being granted in 2010.

The project brief was the redesign of the interior of the top floor penthouse accommodation and the reshaping of the roof structure. The design responds to the challenge of adding a new structure in a conservation area. It has a contemporary look, using structural glass, to differentiate it from the character of the existing building. The glass seats elegantly together with the dominant material of the roofs of the conservation area: lead and slates.

The design of the glass structure was achieved by projecting the shape of the existing roof to its perimeter line resulting in an unusual geometry. 8 glass panels forms the enclosure with a mixture of square, trapezoid and triangular panels.

The glass enclosure was thought of as a continuous envelope of glass. The goal post structure to keep the sliding door system in place is recessed and set behind the plane of the glass allowing the glass envelope to have only one type of detail: a 38mm structural silicon bonded joint. In this way all the joints are consistent and the same. In contrast with the complexity of the geometry the detail is reduced to its minimal expression empowering the material and emphasising its most important character: lightness.

This part of the accommodation takes the shape of a bedroom under the stars. The room contains a spacious open bathroom area where a long continuous Corian top forms the wash basins and a cocoon shaped bathtub is located. The flooring is made of 6m long solid oak planks treated with lye and soap to achieve a bright finish adding to the lightness of the space.