A London Roof Top Pavilion

The house was derelict when the Client bought it and when we first looked round he asked not only for us to restore it to it's former glory, but to add an un-expected wow factor to it. When we clambered out of a small leaky roof hatch onto the roof, we knew where that wow factor could happen.

To come up with a scheme that met the very restrictive planning requirements of a conservation area consisting of historic townhouses and marrying that with a very contemporary intervention to add indoor and outdoor space to the existing house.

We were able to deal with the planning restrictions and Client's brief by proposing a rooftop 'secret garden' in which sat a modern pavilion. The pavilion was then connected to the house via a spiral staircase that split from the historic style of staircase below. This allowed us to create a two storey, penthouse style, suite on the top floor. The Client was originally going to have their Master Bedroom on the second floor, but fell in love with the rooftop concept, so we made the top floor and the pavilion the Master Suite.

We removed the whole original butterfly roof and using massive steel sections created a platform to hold the garden and the steel framed pavilion. The structure was sized to take a large amount of soil, which allowed us to create a fully planted up garden that could sustain full sized shrubs, perennials and grasses.

We then made extensive use of glazing, with the use of London Stock bricks and obscured glazing, to screen off views from the neighbouring properties.

The roof of the pavilion itself 'floats' above the room, fully held up by structural glazing developed in collaboration with Fineline Glazing. This gives the space an airy, lightweight feel, and in conjunction with the large central rooflight, let's light flood in and allows the Client to appreciate the changing light over the course of days and seasons.

Most of the construction was bespoke, developed by us in collaboration with various expert subcontractors under the supervision of Icon 1992, the main contractor. However, a couple of products are worth mentioning as follows.

For the external terrace we used Kebony decking for its character, durability and the natural patina that will develop over time.

For the external lighting we worked with Deltalight, who were able to provide an extensive range of options for each of the different garden and terrace lighting situations. For example we used the Logic W L in the terrace, but at a different orientation to the normal installation, along with Kix lights to highlight the planting.