TECHNICAL FOCUS
All photos: ©Jack Hobhouse
SHINING THE LIGHT ON PAXTON HOUSE Spacious and airy, relishing in light from both north and south aspects, and with private timber-clad balconies, Paxton House is a far cry from the usual commercial-to-residential conversion in London. GRAPHISOFT
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his sensitive renovation could have been a different story had the architect not exercised their creative license and if the developer had chosen to take the easy route. Architecture practice alma-nac was tasked with renovating the derelict 1960s post office building. Located adjacent to Norwood Junction in south London, the concrete frame office block had become overrun with pigeons and graffiti. Developer Joseph Homes approached alma-nac intending to convert the building into residential apartments under permitted development rights. However, after reviewing the proposals, alma-nac suggested taking a more innovative approach. This meant not only renovating the existing building but also adding some newbuild elements to enhance the design.
Letting the light in With its north/south aspect, a typical office-to-residential conversion would have been designed around a central corridor leading to apartments on either side, half of which would have been north-facing and dark. FC&A – DECEMBER – 2020
Instead, alma-nac cleverly created 43 dual-aspect apartments within the building. With access to the apartments running along the north elevation, the one- and two-bedroom homes are arranged in couplets with each one enjoying an angled south-facing balcony with a north-facing window on the other side. In addition, the building has a shared entrance hall, office space and rooftop garden. Together, with the couplet design of the apartments, these shared amenities deliver not only a sense of community for the residents, but also provide an enhanced sense of space. Paxton House embraces wellbeing principles through its enhancement of light and providing each home with outdoor space on their private balconies.
Working in a new dimension The apartments at Paxton House are narrow, but due to clever design, appear both light and airy. alma-nac had considerable experience of working with very narrow spaces and had designed the well-known Slim House in 2012. The idea for Paxton House stemmed in part from that project, which had made such good use of a confined site.
To assist in the design process, alma-nac chose to work in three dimensions. From the initial stages of the project, the client could fully appreciate the sense of light, air and space within the apartments straight away. For this, they chose architectural software Archicad from Graphisoft. Paxton House set a precedent for how Archicad is used within alma-nac, as Director Caspar Rodgers explains: “This was the first large-scale project that we designed using Archicad, and we learnt a lot about the software and how we use it today. We worked very hard to set up a new workflow in the early days, and now that we have an established process in place, the time savings are tremendous.” alma-nac modelled the existing building in Archicad and then used the inbuilt renovation filters to model the alterations and the newbuild elements. “Our client was very heavily involved throughout the design process, and by using the renovation filters, they could easily visualise the design and see exactly which parts of the building were going, which would be retained and which were new,” says Caspar.
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