An Approach to Historic Buildings

“Cadogan Place is the one slight bond that joins two great extremes; it is the connecting link between the aristocratic pavements of Belgrave Square, and the barbarism of Chelsea.”

When ‘The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby’, was written by Charles Dickens in 1838, the houses at nos. 113 and 114 Sloane Street were already 50 years old. The front elevation was undergoing ‘improvements’, yet it would be another 50 years before far more radical alterations would occur. The late 19th Century saw the building increase by three stories and extend back into the garden with a pair of grand additions. Alterations continued throughout the 20th Century culminating in a disastrous cross-lateral conversion into nine separate flat in the 1950s. The mammoth task of reconstruction began in March 2008 and was completed recently in late summer of 2010.

There is no doubt that Georgian and Victorian architecture represent a large proportion of our cultural heritage. Our practice is rooted in a deep respect for historic buildings and for the culture and tradition of good building practices. Sometimes that means clearing away the debris of past work to uncover what is really valuable about the space and what speaks to us about as sense of identity embedded in the building.

With many years of working with historic buildings, we are particularly adept at interweaving old with the new and steering our site team smoothly through the building process so that we get the best out of them and the highest quality workmanship. We were fortunate to work with the Cadogan Estate who not only have expertise transforming historic buildings but also share our approach to this type of project.

We had great communication with the team allowing us to help them understand how historic fabric merges with the new work to create a consistent architectural language. Although styles appear to change from 18th to 20th Century, there is a similarity between stages as they cycle through the tendency towards lightness, density, proportion, scale and material. The new elements were designed to resonate with the retained fabric and restore much needed coherence to the architecture.