Wilkinson Street

In the middle of a mid-Victorian terrace built in the 1860s, one of those parts of the city that escaped from the bombs of the blitz during WW2 in Lambeth, South London. The refurbishment project involved rebuilding the rear outrigger which was in a derelict estate with a bad quality roof, and improving the envelope’s thermal performance to make the house energy efficient. It has been an opportunity to think of how to rebuild a Victorian outrigger in a contemporary way given the tight constraints of budget, time and strict guidance from the Albert Square Conservation Area. The approach has been radical: to dismantle the original outrigger, keeping as many of the original bricks as possible, and reuse them when assembling the new one. The bricks now form a modern cavity façade. That means they are no longer behaving as a load bearing wall, they form a cladding, and as such, it is something to take advantage of. The lintels and the big corner sliding doors show what can be achieved today because the structure is a steel frame. The result is simple and elegant, all the gutters and downpipes remain integrated within the design, strengthening the presence of the brick volume hovering over the ground floor space, which now looks weightless. A new side infill containing the dining room completes and visually connects the ground floor space to the rear garden through a big trapezoidal window framed in a big matt black aluminium cladding. New openings in existing walls establish new relationships between spaces that were previously hidden. The desire to be hyperlocal resulted in a collaboration with South London craftsmen to design and produce the bespoke furniture pieces and the aluminium cladding, minimizing the carbon footprint.