It’s perhaps the greatest compliment to Dan Marks and his team at architectural studio MATA that this apartment, originally envisioned as a rental, turned out so beautifully that its owner decided to make it a base for his family instead.
The cathedral-like construction sits on the top floor of a detached Victorian house in a conservation area in Hampstead. Most of the homes in the street had already been converted and this one was no exception. ‘There were five flats which our client owns,’ recalls Dan. ‘By the time we finished working on the first, they asked us to do the one across the hall, too. When we finished that, they asked, “How about you do the rest of the building?”’
Originally, this project had been approached in the same way as all the previous ones – using robust, straightforward materials to make a high-quality rental – ‘but somewhere along the way,’ Dan recalls, ‘the client saw the potential and encouraged us to go further’.
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That saw his team developing an ambitiously ingenious plan. Their new design filled the valley between the ridges (the highest points) of two pitched roofs, creating an expansive loft apartment with a grand 4.8-metre ceiling. This remarkable structure, developed in close coordination with a skilled structural engineer, floats over the space like the hull of an upturned ship.
‘It’s given us this freedom of plan,’ adds Dan. In the future, the owners could reconfigure the internal layout – ‘a bit like Stansted Airport on a much smaller scale!’ One way the team used this freedom was to insert a mezzanine floor. Articulated in warm oak, the volume contrasts with the neutral white canvas of the roof. Out of that solid timber block, space is ‘carved’ to create storage, a guest bathroom and access to the bedrooms and stairs to the mezzanine.
‘Every successful project is the fruit of collaboration,’ says Dan, adding, ‘it’s a delicate balance between how much your clients trust you and how much they challenge you. I think we had a good mix of both here.’ His team are currently working on the property’s ground-floor garden flat, which means he’s often on site and can see how much the family are enjoying their top-floor eyrie.
‘It doesn’t need ostentatious marble and high-end finishes,’ Dan says of the project’s success. ‘It’s about this dynamic form that goes from dramatic, social space to becoming a lot more cosy and human scale.’
The kitchen, where the roof swoops from its tallest point, right down to waist-height, is a favourite spot, but he also loves the intimacy of how spaces are concealed and revealed within the block that supports the mezzanine; the feeling of anticipation and discovery when the soaring ceiling opens up again. ‘I love those moments of turning a corner and something revealing itself.’ mata-architects.co.uk
