Pop house

This commission arose through Paul McAneary Architects’ experience of working in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, an exclusive enclave of west London. Paul McAneary Architects’s reputation for high quality residential design spread by word-of-mouth and the practice was invited to remodel a house belonging to one of the UK’s leading pop stars.

The large Regency dwelling had a garden and mews, which had been converted into a recording studio. The focus of the remodelling is an expanded roof zone to accommodate an enlarged master bedroom with en suite bathroom. The new roof is a version of a standard mansard, inventively customised and reconceptualised by Paul McAneary Architects for this particular context.

Within its folded form, like a delicate piece of origami, carefully positioned skylights bring natural light into the spaces below. Mindful of planning constraints, the project had to be executed with great tact and sensitivity in negotiation with local planners, a challenged that drew on the practice’s considerable experience of working with existing historic buildings.

[By Catherine Slessor*]