House on Work
The site of this project represents the remaining piece of Charlotte Road to have escaped redevelopment in the nineteenth century. At that time, most of the small eighteenth-century, one-room deep cottages were replaced with full plot developments of larger scale warehouse and workshop buildings that served the neighbourhood’s burgeoning industrial economy.
The significance of developing the entirety of such a plot, where a rear yard as well as the front street once brought light and air, brings particular challenges to this mixed-use work and residential project.
The ground and basement floors are designed for commercial uses. The first floor is designed to function optionally as an autonomous live/work space; it is the one floor that allows the entire elevation to be part of a single big space. Four large floor-to-ceiling windows are spread equally across the facade as a slight variance to the floor above.
The second-floor rooms form part of a grouping of bedrooms for the principal apartment, whose public rooms are on the third floor. Screened from the street by a front parapet, two panels of perforated brick walls infill the column and the building’s lintel-framed facade.
