Just past the southeast corner of Cleaver Square in Kennington, London, is a weathered brick wall with a painted timber gate. What’s interesting about it is the Walled Courtyard house that sits behind it, virtually invisible from the street. It’s a single-story two-bedroom dwelling completed by the local architecture studio Inglis Badrashi Loddo (IBLA).
The plot itself is 63 sq m (678 sq ft) and used to be a car park. At one point, it formed part of the walled garden of the Georgian townhouse that sits adjacent to it. It’s the owners of this property who commissioned IBLA to design a separate, accessible home on this piece of land.
There were significant constraints here. Cleaver Square, which is a residential area located on the south bank of the Thames, actually has some historical significance. Its origins date back to 1789, making it one of the earliest planned residential squares in the area. No new home has been built there for 175 years. On top of limited space, it needed to match a distinct aesthetic that IBLA needed to maintain.
Rather than fighting the enclosed nature of the site, IBLA leaned into it. The boundary walls were rebuilt in a combination of salvaged and new London stock brick, echoing what would have stood there originally. From the street, it looks like an ordinary garden wall. But when you step through the gate, you will come across walls that are finished in a lime-mortar paint that significantly brightens up the space.
The interior is designed to bring in as much natural light as possible. The rooms of the Walled Courtyard house have skylights and are built around a private courtyard garden, with floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors that open directly onto it. The main bedroom on the western end provides clear sightlines through to the rest of the house. This makes the Walled Courtyard house feel connected and open, in a similar way to the striking Vaazh House in India.
The kitchen also has a skylight at the center for natural illumination of the ply cabinets beneath it. The same goes for the bathrooms. The eastern end also has an extra room that can be used as a spare bedroom or even a TV or reading room. The house has plain white walls and exposed ceiling joists that are bare and whitewashed running through it.
Heating comes from an air-source heat pump with underfloor pipes, and a sedum roof completes the picture of a modern home that embraces its historic location.
Source: IBLA
