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London
Adjaye Associates
For London's Lost House, Adjaye Associates carves a residence that captures changing qualities of light
By William Weathersby, Jr.
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Photo © Lyndon Douglas |
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Over the past six years as principal of his own firm, David Adjaye has gained a reputation as one of Great Britain’s most promising young architects. His series of conceptually driven houses and apartments strip away artifice to revel in bold Minimalism [record, December 2002, page 126]. Although he has begun to tackle international projects on a larger scale, such as the commission for the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, Adjaye continues to approach residential projects in London as intimate laboratories for experimenting with color, light, and form.
With the architectural and lighting design of Lost House, a two-bedroom apartment in the King’s Cross neighborhood, Adjaye has created a mysterious urban retreat that evokes a hidden lair. The residence is a study in the balance between darkness and light, absorption and reflection. A series of light wells, internal courtyards, and skylights harness diffused daylight, while dimmable exposed fluorescents set against intensely colored walls provide moody illumination.
To expand interior living space while retaining a connection to the outdoors, Adjaye enclosed most of the courtyard but carved out three glass-enclosed interior gardens open to the sky to serve as focal points. The gardens decrease in size as one moves diagonally through the plan. The front entry garden features a wood deck and looks onto the street through a screen of black timber strips fitted into the former truck bay. A central garden features a small pond. The top band of this space’s glass enclosure is edged in mirrors to further reflect daylight and the movement of water, visible from within the surrounding rooms. The smallest light court, a pivot point between the kitchen, a bathroom, and one end of the main living space, encloses a small mound of earth and an evergreen tree: a stylized garden. “The three courtyards function as their own sculptures, encompassing changing light and weather conditions,” Adjaye says. “I wanted to look at how light comes into an interior as a phenomenon, not through the apertures of standard windows.”
Want the full story? Read the entire article in our February 2006 issue.
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