Episode Information London: The Jewel Box

Date Published:

11/06/2008

Sarah, a maker of modern jewellery, and Coneyl, a freelance photographer, wanted a modern home from which they could both work. But they also wanted a uniquely personal house.

So they commissioned architect Mike Tonkin to come up with a radical design for their long, thin site in a north London residential street.

The result is a house designed around a water garden and built to look delicate while being strong. A pair of buildings - a house and a double-height studio - face each other at either end of the long water garden. They are connected by a colonnaded walkway on one side and a glass-walled wing comprising a workshop and bedrooms on the other.

The Build

The house is open-plan, with a living area and kitchen downstairs and a bedroom and bathroom above. The studio is one large space. Built into the architect's design were to be decorative features that made playful references to cameras and jewels, reflecting the owners' work.

Illuminated units in the kitchen and bedroom would glow in the dark like jewels in a jewel box. A special set of blinds with an aperture would turn the studio into a camera obscura and project an image of the house on to the back wall. The exterior walls would be finished with a white render containing crushed glass beads, which would sparkle.

The construction techniques were innovative, using methods more commonly found in commercial building. Mike and his engineer designed a lightweight timber frame and panels that could be firmly bonded together with glue. The foundations consist of hollow steel micro-piles, sunk into concrete. External glass walls have miniature plastic tubes sandwiched, end to end, between two sheets of glass, to allow light in while blocking the view from the street. The flat roofs were constructed with a waterproof membrane.

Despite a fire at the timber factory, which destroyed many of the panels and set work back 10 days, the house was finished in six months. From the outside, it looks simple, modern and matt white - the sparkle had to be dropped from the outer render to save money. Inside, the house and enclosed courtyard are alive to the changing light, which pours through the glass walls and reflects off the water garden.

The two main buildings face each other across the water garden, their glass walls and white interiors picking up the play of light on the water. The colonnaded walkway and line of workshop/bedrooms connect the buildings and enclose the water garden, creating a private space.

The slender construction, gleaming white paint and expanses of glass express delicacy and lightness. Internal walls and floors are finished with MDF and chipboard. The finish is natural and surfaces are either painted white or stained dark.

The interior is dramatic: a vast open living area glazed along one side joins the bedroom and office wings, and a five-storey library tower with a lookout/reading room at the top rises up through the centre.

The building was highly experimental - in effect the couple were making it up as they went along, and they encountered many problems, falling way behind schedule. 'I've got no regrets', commented Jeremy early on, 'but there are bits that are desperately over-complicated, and a bit of simplification on the way might have been easier on our health and our wallets'.