Haven Mews, Islington, London Sat between four Georgian terraces existed a two storey 1930s garage building with its only access through a narrow gate alongside a building on the corner of Liverpool Road and Barnsbury Street. Recognising the restrictions and limitations of the site the developers, Joel Properties, commissioned architects Buckley Gray Yeoman to design three contemporary three-storey townhouses. Their ingenious solution, developing only within the footprint and the profile of the existing garage, retained the outer walls as the garden walls to the surrounding Georgian terraces. The key design objective was the penetration of natural light into the houses, achieved by having a series of internal and external rooms with aluminium-framed glazing to the front and rear elevations. Access to each house is by means of a bridge at ground level, with decking of galvanised steel trays filled with black tinted screed sitting in a steel frame supported by concrete storage units at lower-ground level. Split-levels create a combination of single and double height spaces, encouraging a sense of vertical space and establishing site lines and interaction between the different levels of each of the three storeys. As the Housing Design Awards Judges commented: “This is keyhole surgery, invisibly adding life without scarring.”
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