Anderson House shows what talented architects can achieve, even on the most difficult of sites was a worthy winner of the 2003 RIBA Manser Medal. Confronted by the task of shoe-horning a new house into a space bounded on all sides by party walls 7-metres high, the new building required 60 Party Wall notices to be served and 26 separate Party Wall Agreements to be negotiated before building works could begin. The architect, Jamie Fobert, has solved what many other architects and most house builders would regard as an intractable problem- that of a building a new three-storey house that is almost completely underground, with almost no external walls and virtually no windows, only skylights. The planners stipulated that the existing envelope could not be exceeded. They allowed a small open courtyard to be in filled but required an asymmetrical roof sloping towards an existing neighbouring lightwell while ruling that this lightwell could not be raised. This forced the critical decision: to descend to basement level from the street front door and corridor, passing below the parapet. The main living space created in the basement occupies the maximum volume the site allowed lit by a large rooflight with another- a plate-glass floor- over the kitchen. The stairs and master bedroom are toplit by folded roof lights and this room also has an end wall –a double width solid door- that opens on to a small roof terrace. Photography: David Grandgorge (07961 380628) and Sue Barr (020 7261 1607)
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