Christine Blau 
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Job Details:
Place: East London, United Kingdom
Architect: DGN Studio / @d_g_n_s
Contractor: DBMS Ltd
Engineer: Frequent Structural Style
Photographer: Tim Crocker / @timcrockerphotographer
12 months: 2022
Footprint: 1,216 square feet
From the Architect: “Magpie Property is a vibrant, content-first refurbishment and extension of an East London terrace property for a few, a textile and electronic designer.
“The clients, eager collectors of midcentury home furnishings with comprehensive understanding in self-develop tasks, approached us to open and extend the floor flooring of their north-experiencing residence. The quick quickly grew to encompass refurbishing the higher floor, so we done a cohesive renovation in the course of even though incorporating several repurposed fittings and furniture from the clients’ classic collection.
“Functioning initial on the concepts of spatial arranging and all-natural light, we redesigned the current floor flooring system to encompass a additional cohesive and seamless sequence for residing, eating, and cooking. We then reworked the regular configuration of scaled-down rooms, opening the middle of the program to create a welcoming residing area at the entrance, which leads down into the new kitchen and eating place, which extends a few meters into the rear backyard.
“Connection to the backyard was central to the transient, achieved with the addition of a forged concrete and darkish stained oak window seat at the rear elevation, the glazed panels of which can be completely opened to present a seamless move from eating space to yard. Outside, the rear façade is intended to give depth and a diploma of privateness. It has an expressive, galvanized steel framework with dim stained timber window trims, preferred to tie neatly in with the present black-stained back garden home. Slim metal posts crack up the darkish elevation, which is topped by a thick direct parapet that assignments to produce a small overhang, sheltering the bench down below from rain.
“This stitching and weaving of various material components and objects inherited from the consumer continues during the house. In the new extension, we treated reclaimed London inventory bricks with a mineral paint for a softer inside. Set three actions down from the entrance degree, the new extension takes advantage of greater ceiling heights and overhead glazing.
“An financial and practical kitchen area is accommodated by significant joinery parts for abundant storage, all designed to get the job done about products that ended up previously in the client’s possession this kind of as the oven and hob. Stainless metal counters and splashback act as the main product of contrast versus ash cupboards and open up shelving. These prolong to a much larger, stainless-steel unit that conceals the extract at large amount, as properly as providing ample space for preparation to provider massive gatherings. An ash wood lower out in the wall connects the kitchen area to the sitting down area at the entrance of the residence, elongating web page lines all through the ground flooring.
“Upstairs, the floor system is rearranged to accommodate two bedrooms and a household toilet in lieu of the former a few-bedroom arrangement, which can even now accommodate a third small bedroom in upcoming if essential. The new rest room is enclosed in an oak-framed reeded glass monitor with slatted timbers previously mentioned the doorway to enable light-weight to permeate into the top rated ground. Microcement flooring are taken up to the walls, with the interior built all-around the clients’ collected merchandise which includes the bathroom, large sink and bath.
“In lieu of the previous, slender corridor exterior the toilet, a vivid, open up landing can now accommodate a sofa or research, going further than mere circulation room. A wooden flooring reclaimed from the structural and supporting timbers of historic barns through the North-East & Mid-Atlantic locations elevates the come to feel of it as a transitory place to the bedrooms in which minimum alterations were being produced.
“The project was facilitated by a prolonged-term marriage concerning the customer and contractor, as effectively as a sensitive attitude to reusing found objects. DGN Studio rethought the conventional style process in favor of a far more intuitive, adaptable solution, screening new ways of working in a far more agile and responsive manner to web page procedures, earning Magpie dwelling a successful collage of lots of arms.”
