Carmody Groarke’s masterful design of a house and studio in south London

Set within a backland plot in Lambeth, South London, this project by architecture studio Carmody Groarke combines a new private house with ample workshop/studio space. Though landlocked on all sides by 19th-century terraced houses, the site was unusually large and the architects worked with a material palette of existing brickwork, concrete and white mortar to create modern, sculptural spaces that feel at the same time open, minimalist and solid.

‘The pitched-roofs of the original buildings have been removed leaving only the perimeter brick walls as existing fabric. Within this boundary, a new sectional treatment of the site has allowed a large lateral single-storey house to be built above the retained working space’, explain the architects.

An opening allows views from the living space towards the entrance. Photography: Gilbert McCarragher

The house’s clean interiors feature highlights in metal and marble, while a generous circulation core leads down to a basement swimming pool, dramatically lit from above. A cast in situ fireplace provides a focal point in the open-plan living space, which looks out to a selection of outdoors areas in the form of patios and richly planted roof gardens. 

Carmody Groarke are well known for their refined, modern residences – such as their brick house on the edge of Highgate Wood – but not only; the clever pair have a slew of cultural buildings in their portfolio too. Currently working on a temporary museum of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House and the Windermere Jetty Museum in the north-west of England, there’s plenty more to come from the prolific studio. §

Dorset Works was featured as the location for the March 2019 (W*240) fashion shoot by Dham Srifuengfung