'Screens fold back to reveal a hidden spiral staircase,
wooden floors with inset glass panels give glimpses of
activity on floors below, the glass pod shower stands sentinel
in the middle of the bedroom.
'There is an quirky theatricality to Cullum & Nightingale
Architects new house in London. Unlike some contemporary
houses where the occupants can but mess up their perfect,
abstract form, this is a house deliberately designed for
the inhabitants to engage with and enjoy.
'The house was commissioned by artist Shaun Stanley
and his family. Stanley had found the site - an amazing
ramshackle collection of buildings of differing dates and
varying stages of decay, hidden away down a narrow alleyway
in one of north London's more salubrious neighbourhoods.
'After seeing an interior project Cullum & Nightingale
Architects had designed for his brother, Stanley asked
the practice to design a new house on the site for him.
'The only proviso to this otherwise dream commission
was that Stanley wanted, if necessary, to be able to change
the design as it went along. To do this, he wanted to control
the building work himself, so that instead of employing
a main contractor, he appointed directly all the sub-contractors.
'Instead of simply imposing an arbitrary new design
on the site, Cullum & Nightingale Architects' new house
deliberately retains something of the original character
of the site.
'The main body of the house is rectangular, with
two wings joined by a conservatory running between them.
The rectangular part of the house is a new, three-storey
block and cylindrical staircase tower which houses the
kitchen and the main living area. The bedrooms are above
ranged over two floors.
'At ground-floor level, this links to a series of
single-storey additions that cluster round it. A reminder
(albeit much neater and more organised) of the jumble of
small buildings that formerly covered the site.
'Walking into the house, the first room you enter
is one such space. The entrance hall and granny flat, which
gives off it, are glazed single storey spaces just like
the lean-tos that formerly stood on the site.
'From here, you enter either into the main, double-height
body of the house, or head straight into a single-storey
conservatory which runs along the length of house's west
facade and opens out onto the garden.
'The only original construction that has been retained
is a l9th century laundry building. This has been knocked
through to link into the main body of the house at ground-floor
level. Stanley initially intended to use this as a studio,
but the building now forms an additional sitting room.
'The result of this collection of different spaces
is a house where the rooms each possess remarkably different
characters.
'Instead of the homogeneity of mood you tend to find
in modern houses, the building, with its range of atmospheres
- from the open-plan modern space of the main body of the
house, to the restored laundry and the glass and steel
conservatory - is like some wonderful, rambling old country
house where you are not quite sure what to expect on opening
the door to the next room.
'This relaxed, undogmatic style is typical of Cullum & Nightingale
Architects. It is not that the practice's work is without
rigour and consistency. Buildings such as the Central School
of Speech and Drama ( RIBAJ, July 1994 ), the classrooms
at North Westminster Community College (1991) and Richard
Nightingale's own house (1988) all display a shared palette
of materials - white render, glass and steel - and a common
interest in the expression of structure in a decidedly
modern but definitely not high-tech manner.
'But the practice, unlike some other young firms
trying to establish themselves, is not obsessed with stamping
its identity over a building at the expense of comfort
and individuality.
'Perhaps this has something to do with the Cambridge
tradition out of which both Hugh Cullum and Richard Nightingale
come.
'Both studied at Cambridge under the guidance of
Colin St John Wilson when the influence of Sir Leslie Martin
was still strong, and both subsequently worked with Wilson.
That Cambridge fascination with what Wilson calls the 'other
tradition of modern architecture' - the warm Scandinavian
modernism of Aalto and Asplund - can be seen in Cullum & Nightingale
Architects' buildings with their unaggresive yet clearly
modern style.
'The same Cambridge style is perhaps also partly
responsible for another Cullum & Nightingale Architects
trait: the practice's fascination with details. In some
of the practice's work this can go too far, so that the
buildings end up looking over-fiddly.
'Purists might make a similar jibe about some elements
of the new house.
'The quirky cylindrical shower, the curved panel
that can be pulled round the bottom of the spiral staircase
to cut the conservatory off from the main living room,
the twiddely balustrades on the second staircase could
certainly annoy in any other building type. And yet in
the house they seem fun and playful.
'Like that seminal Cambridge house, Sam Ede's house
at Kettles Yard (extended by Martin in 1970), the house
also has huge numbers of shelves and ledges on which to
display objects.
'Whether it is a conscious move or not, this use
of detailing also helps to create a sense of engagement
with the building. This is architecture that you can take
part in: you can pull the screen round the spiral stair
and close it off, you can look down through the glass panel
in the floor and see what's going on on the first floor,
you can feel the texture of the rough brick back wall -
the party wall with the neighbouring property onto which
the house is built.
'Clearly detailing of this kind does not come cheap.
It also takes time, and in this Cullum & Nightingale
Architects was helped by Stanley's decision not to have
a contractor and to allow changes to the design as it went
along.
'But it still seems that, in a country where vast
numbers of people feel completely alienated by and
disengaged from their surroundings, that thinking
about ways in which
architecture can be used to make people feel involved
in their environment is, and will continue to be,
an extremely important issue.'
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