'While an Englishman's home might be his castle, an artist's studio
has to be a great deal more, for it is not simply a space where
the artist stores the paints, canvases and brushes. It has to serve
several functions, simultaneously being a working space, exhibition
area and a refuge.
'When artist Kate Whiteford commissioned Richard Nightingale
of Hugh Cullum and Richard Nightingale Architects to design her
a new studio in leafy Dulwich, she drew on the creative relationship
she had already enjoyed with them on their spectacular commission
for the new High Commission in Nairobi Kenya, where her monumentai
linear artworks now grace its cool interior.
'Whiteford's needs were straightforward: the lease was up
on the studio she had been renting in Brixton, and she wanted
her own space. However the site on which this new studio
was to be
built was anything but straighfforward: seen from a crow's-eye
view, the site plan was an irregular, serrated triangle,
its sharp nose pointing down Half Moon Lane. Moreover,
the plot formed part
of the Dulwich Estate, that patrician institution which keeps
an imperious eye on development in the area.
'Instead of kowtowing to conservative taste, Nightingale
came up with an idiosyncratic design that, while incorporating
many of the architectural features of the traditional studio, gives
their dimensions and inter-relationships a twist. Technically a
garage, laundry and studio at the same time, the single-storey
building squats low in the site, the eaves of the roof reaching
far down to the yellow brick walls, resulting in a double-height
internal space with a floor measurement of over 75 square metres.
'On the northfacing elevation, essential for that diffused
soft light necessary to painters, two dormer windows have been
pulled like elastic, forming two elegant slits reaching beyond
the profile of the roof. Between them, a tall, thin galvanised
steel door starting high within the sriking copper-covered mansard
roof plunges like a metallic proboscis into the ground below.
'"Copper has a life of its own; it goes green and ties
in with the surrounding trees, while lead looks rather heavy," says
Nightingale. "The views at floor level are deliberately restricted
so that you have total privacy, but when you open the doors
they rest flush against the side of the building, making the walls
seem
permeable."
'Once inside, you get an immense sense of uplift created
by the white walls and the ceiling, where immensely fine steel
rods in tension can be picked out.
'Twinned skylight windows pause like resting wings across
the peal of the mansard roof. Below, the grey-painted concrete
floor is heated from underneath, leaving the walls unen. cumbered
by radiators. At one end of the studio, a mezzanine level has been
introduced, providing enough living space above the unstained timberpanelled
floor for a divan bed while also covering the washing and showering
areas below. A cast concrete worktop and sink rest on painted building
blocks, with hospital-style taps completing the functional appearance.
Plywood walls panel the shower-room, which consists of basin, toilet
and a shower that drains away into a hole in the floor. Simplicity
replaces prettiness.
'The studio is not without its own humour: look at the ceiling
above the mezzanine on a grey day, and you might detect something
odd about the way the spotlights are dotted across the slopes of
the roof. "It's actually the same shape as the constellation
of The Plough" says Whiteford, much of whose work is tied
to the elements. "At night the ceiling vanishes and it seems
as if you are looking into the naked sky.'
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