Jonathan Tuckey Design Limited

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen

UPPER WIMPOLE STREET APARTMENT

Jonathan Tuckey Design

PHOTOGRAPHS
Ståle Eriksen

YEAR
2019

LOCATION
London, United Kingdom

CATEGORY
Apartments, Renovation, Apartment Interiors

Virginia Woolf described Wimpole street as; “…the most august of London streets, the most impersonal. Indeed, when the world seems to tumble to ruin, and civilisation rocks on its foundations, one has only to go to Wimpole Street…”.

With this in mind, in the context of 2020, it was quite fitting for the practice to have completed the transformation of a listed, two-bedroom, ground floor apartment on this particular street in Marylebone.

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen

The outline brief was to generally rethink and refurbish the apartment. Primarily they expressed a need to evaluate the layout, storage, and decoration.

Sound attenuation in certain parts of the property was also problematic.

The transformation of the property was based around linking a new series of vibrant spaces through a family of joinery objects.

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen

These ‘objects’ serve as a direct response to the clients’ brief to create a large amount of storage, concealing the untidiness of everyday life.

The design of the joinery pieces came from the synthesis of a number of disparate, yet linked ideas.

There was an objective to create joinery which referenced a regency style, the period the property was built in.

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen

However, the aim was to achieve this as a modern interpretation with a subtly as not to be a pastiche.

The cascade of curves on these pieces was arranged in such a fashion as to link views sequentially through the apartment.

Two works by Stefano di Giovanni are also important to understanding the project.

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen

These helped conceptualise the joinery pieces as an internal architecture, housed within the larger volume of the building.

They were designed with the ambition of being able to subdivide spaces but also create a relationship with the vertical proportions of the rooms.

The plan for the apartment was developed as a result of studying John Soane’s Bank of England plan and also Louis Kahn’s investigation in British castles.

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen

Both of these precedents helped inform the idea of walls as rooms… by increasing the thickness of the walls it enables volumes (rooms) to be excavated from them.

In the case of Upper Wimpole Street, the joinery would be used to enable this thickening of the walls.

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen

Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
© Ståle Eriksen


Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
Planometric
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
Ground floor plan
Upper Wimpole Street Apartment
Site plan

Jonathan Tuckey Design Limited
T +44 20 89601909
Jonathan Tuckey Design Limited
58 Milson Rd, London W14 0LB, United Kingdom