This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This post looks at inspiring new ways architects are making city buildings lessen their environmental footprint and creating spaces you just want to be in. and yes, I admit my knowledge of architecture is low so this is inspired as much as by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright as an Open House 2017 tour to the Rain Sun Room in Islington. Words from Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).
How beautiful houses can be if you can add water. The Sun Rain Room is just a room, and it may not be over a waterfall, like Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water (1935 Pennsylvania), but this unusual indoor/outdoor space at Wilmington Square, WC1 is a magical
extension to a Georgian town house making maximum use of light, shade and the local weather.
In the Sun Rain Room the modest courtyard space has been transformed into three multi-purpose spaces, a glass indoor room; a covered wall-less outdoor spot with BBQ and a paved area. Indoors has a distinctly meditative feel that would be a happy place whatever the weather, or season. And architects Tonkin Liu already use it for relaxing, reading, to display cuttings,
for meetings and to reinvigorate the spirit. Clever use of sun tubes through
the sedum roof turns the indoor space into a dappled wonderland when it’s
sunny. Equally imaginative use of the Georgian butterfly roof (sometimes known
as a valley roof) siphons off the rain water into an elegant tank which runs
along the side of a brick wall festooned with ivy. Press a button and
the tank releases a small flow of water to create a reflection pool that covers the dark
granite slabs the Sun Rain Room looks over. It’s only millimetres deep but it’s clearly a pleasure to
sit cosy inside, lost in the reflection of the Georgian building ruffled by ripples. At night the effect must be an even bigger
show-stopper when the twinkling lights power up. Or when you want to surprise
and pad across it as if walking on water.
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| The Sun Rain Room roof from the staircase window. |
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| Look up and you see the back of the Georgian house with a curving grass roof above. |
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| Greg Storarr talks Open House visitors through the thinking behind the Sun Rain Room. The trees have deeper root ball pots tucked ut of sight. |
Guide Greg Storarr, who works at Tonkin Liu, took groups
around the Sun Rain Room during Open House 2017. He explained that the house
had been subdivided into flats but was now used both as offices by the practice
and a place to live.
Creating the Sun Rain Room gave an opportunity to transform the basement. Work took a year and the result is transfixing. It was also very hard to photograph (blame the mirrors, the group, and my own inability to find the spot!).
The tour started in a basement kitchen done with great simplicity and
a lot of bleached wooden panels. There’s an internal office lit from above and
then a stunning curved 2nd bedroom, with walls and door made from plywood, echoing the curving Sun Rain Room above. This bedroom is well-thought out.
It has a neat mirrored area behind the double bed for storing belongings, as
well as a bathroom. Everything is small – because it’s London –
but done with such rectangular abandonment and strategic mirror siting that the
place expands and expands. And of course it’s not that small because Greg was
showing around at least 15 people, many with bags, and we all fitted in fine.
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| Architect Anna Liu in red and white. The mirrors make the space confusing to photograph. |
Architect Anna Liu, resplendent in an amazing red outfit
topped with white lace, shadowed the group. She lives in the house with
business/life partner Mike Tonkin and laughingly explained she was: “the madness
behind the brains.” But this is an architect’s dream, altering a house so it
becomes a place she, (and definitely me) really want to live. Her pride is obvious and it was good
hearing how much she “loves the light you get from the reflection and the
ripple effect.”
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| A courtyard space transformed. |
So could you do this at home? Some of the materials are very
affordable, eg, plywood (albeit with a beautiful grain). There was also an
external spiral staircase linking the basement floor to the Sun Rain Room – its
only drawback being the usual for spiral staircases, they are very narrow. But
there is also some amazing technology to keep the Sun Rain Room roof floating
over a long stretch of what used to be courtyard. And there’s a super expensive
and very skilled creation, a glass staircase that floatingly links the Sun Rain
Room with the main house kitchen high above the basement courtyard.
Apparently the work cost around £2,000m2. Social
housing is around £1,300m2 and high end projects around £3-4,000m2.
One of the Open House visitors reckons this was where Aubrey
Beardsley – the illustrator famous for his “bizarre sense of humour and
fascination with the taboo” worked. If correct, then clearly the house keeps
inspiring.
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| Energy reading metre - get yours from your energy supplier so you know how much power your gadgets are drawing. |
Turns out it’s been rentable on Airbnb for lets over the
summer. I’m gutted I never thought to nose around looking for starchitect mini
breaks. Now it’s going to be used by a more permanent tenant, who I hope adores
the place. Maybe they can occasionally
visit Exmouth Market, but mostly I’d like to think the new tenant is drawn back
to the Sun Rain Room basement and courtyard for inspiration, fulfilment and a chance to feel properly
in touch with the weather. This may be its first winter, but it’s clear Anna
and her colleagues are looking forward to new reflections because this the Sun Rain Room is truly a living space for all seasons.
- More about the architects, Tonkin Liu, here. http://www.tonkinliu.co.uk/
- See this article about the Sun Rain Room published in the Guardian in August 2017 here. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/aug/13/sun-rain-room-review-tonkin-liu-home-for-all-seasons
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