dima
  • High Tea

    The investors in this rewrite of Dickensian London wished to add eight chapters (lofts and penthouses) to this vertical volume, as it were, in an historic section of the city.  Expansions within the buildings footprint were limited by venerable codes.  The resultant design presents a symmetrical face to the street where lifts operate within an expanded shaft of light to access the multi-tiered upper units.  The remaining sides of the structure reflect the irregular shaped geometry above.  To accommodate the requisite parking a garage was built into the ground floor, entering at the rear.  A straight corridor with contrasting solid block walls, one continuous, the other a folded plane, connects to the central lift.  Scones and tea, the bucolic bastion of Victorian civility, surely remains a Four O’clock staple in these “flats” which fuse formality and the tenets of minimalist functionalism.