Clapton House
A new family home on a tight infill site
Location: Hackney, London
Client: Private
Contractor: H.A. Marks
Images: Charles Hosea
Year: 2018
*Hackney Design Awards 2018: Commended
*Hackney Design Awards 2018: People’s Choice Winner
*Dezeen Urban House 2019: Longlist
*Living Etc. 2020: Best Architect for Complex Sites
This is an imaginative COR-TEN clad new house, shoehorned into a tight infill site. The judges commended the sequence of spaces from the compact ground floor, leading to open-plan and light-filled upper rooms. A square, tiny courtyard at the rear makes excellent use of this limited and constrained piece of land.
Hackney Design Awards Judges
Image credits: Charles Hosea
The use of entrance tiles from the previous builder’s yard on the site was a nice touch. Likewise, netting in place of guardrails, was particularly appropriate in this innovative and fun architectural design.
Hackney Design Awards Judges
Image credits: Charles Hosea
Clapton House is a three-bedroom infill family house on a tight site in the Chatsworth Road area of Hackney. On the ground floor are three bedrooms arranged around a courtyard. From the ground floor hallway rises a single flight of stairs which lead up to an open plan living, dining and kitchen on the first floor.
Image credits: Charles Hosea
In the first floor space the client wished for as much height as possible; the trick is pulled off by connecting a sequence of distinct spaces - dining, kitchen and living defined by changes in levels, scale and height.
Image credits: Charles Hosea
The second flight of stairs leads to an office on the second floor which in turn leads onto an expansive roof deck; keeping a low profile between the neighbours’ roof tops.
Image credits: Charles Hosea
The house plays with scale; using oversized windows and openings to create a greater feeling of space across the courtyard, picking up precious longer views and providing a strong connection to the street.
Image credits: Charles Hosea