Markhouse Maisonette

A creative response to an increasingly common situation of young professionals struggling to afford a decent home, the East London apartment has been completely yet cost-effectively overhauled to house both the architect and his mother. Although a particularly personal project, the maisonette’s flexible multi-functional spaces allow for a variety of future scenarios.

What could be afforded was a 39m2 one-bedroom flat with no garden access, further constrained by compartmentalised rooms performing single functions, meaning that the only living space was the front room. The project is therefore driven not only by a need to maximise the available space, but also make it as actively used as possible.

An obsession with compact, de-cluttering design achieved these objectives, aided by fruitful collaboration with a local joiner. Beautifully-crafted birch plywood elements precisely integrated throughout provide full-height and below-window storage whilst doubling as places on which to sit or sleep. Walls and ceilings were realigned to minimise unsightly kinks, with tall pocket doors ensuring rooms feel as open as possible whilst providing privacy when required.

A main open-plan living space spanning the entire depth of the house is created by knocking through the spine wall and concealing it within kitchen and utility units. This dual-aspect space is amply-lit throughout the day by street and garden-facing sash windows. Encaustic floor tiles covering the whole room laid in a pattern of dappled greens with yellow accents unify and enliven the space. As well as giving thermal benefits, underfloor heating here means no walls are obstructed by radiators. Elsewhere, oak floors in the stairwell vertically link and bleed into more private spaces to emphasise spatial continuity.

From the street, the house appears unaltered. Yet some 50% of the existing flat’s floor area is added by extending the rear half of the existing roof with a crisply-detailed dormer, clad in fibre-reinforced concrete strips around a generous south-facing anodised window. This study-cum-bedroom reached by a new top-lit stair enjoys an expansive view of allotments and a church spire juxtaposed against London’s skyline, framed by a library wall with an inviting window seat.