The story behind an extraordinary RIBA award-winning home in Kew
“Someone said to us, it’s like an artwork as opposed to a home because it’s such a one-off,” says management consultant Jo Lucas, neatly summing up the house in Kew she shares with her husband Tim, in a nutshell. “It’s somewhere that inspires a huge level of creativity and imagination; it allows for big ambition.” After all, not many people can say their young daughters once had a slide down to the basement – where Tim built a boat – or that they walk across a bridge encased in glazing from one side of the property to the other.
For the couple, the ambitious out-of-the-box thinking began in 2010 when they took a punt on buying a plot of land with seven derelict garages on it – in a conservation area, without planning permission for change of use. “Being willing to take that kind of risk limited the number of people who were interested. What was unusual about the site was that it fronted the street: plots like this are almost always tucked away as back land,” continues Jo, who has plenty of experience with renovations having grown up in Australia with her father, a builder.
One of the trickiest decisions for structural engineer Tim, was choosing an architect. But, having worked with Piercy&Company on Martello Tower (a dilapidated Napoleonic sea defence that was converted into a contemporary home), he knew that founding director and friend Stuart Piercy was the right person for the job. Constraints such as height allowances, together with various inspirations that ranged from the late Lynn Chadwick’s sculptures to a house in Cambridge built around a courtyard that Tim had visited, and the architectural vernacular of the area, all went into the ideas pot.
“Most of the conservation area has the same London stock brick but our road is quite eclectic, with a chapel and an Edwardian terrace. The house fits into that mix and adds to it,” explains Tim. “Before the garages, the site was communal stables and there’s a narrative about how you replace that gable form respectfully.” Instead of a pragmatic tick list, Jo wrote the design brief as the story of how they hoped to live in the property. “We wanted a real family home with a combination of small, cosy nooks to tuck away in and big open spaces for when friends come over,” she recalls.
The layout is exactly that. Both wings have living spaces on the ground floor: a huge kitchen-dining-living room with a pantry and laundry in one; a sunken snug in the other. Above the first are two interlinked children’s rooms and a guest room while the other has a master en-suite. Then there’s the multi-functional glass walkway. “It has the bridge and a staircase, painted a dark purple-red, which sorts out the circulation. What it also does is give transparency so that instead of a monolith, you have two smaller volumes with glazing that connects them together,” continues Tim, of the project which took four years.
Those two-storey volumes are clad in Corten steel which replicates the gabled shape of the existing brick wall at the front, and has gradually weathered over time. “The site is hard to access from behind so we needed a maintenance-free façade; it was an engineering solution with colour and texture that echoes the tones of the conservation area brickwork,” he says. Pre-fabricated in a factory in Hull, the house was shipped down in parts, lifted onto the site and welded together.
Although industrial steel and glass might not seem like the most obvious choices for a home, the couple’s references to nearby Kew Gardens helped their neighbours imagine what it would look like. “We always talked about it as the same material as the treetop walkways; the patina was familiar to people and it gave us our precedent,” says Jo, also citing Stuart’s idea to lend the Corten a residential feel through Moroccan-style cut-outs that reflect dappled light like a tree. “It’s one of the most stunning things about the house. You can almost trace the time of year by the unexpected rays of sunlight that appear on the walls and floor.”
The warm, refined interiors palette is based around oak veneer panelling, Douglas Fir flooring and white walls. “There is external brickwork in the courtyard paving, both front and back, and then it continues inside too. In the snug, the first meter off the floor is brick to signify that it’s scooped out of the ground,” says Tim of the cosy space. It also has a fireplace that heats up a concealed water tank and, like the rest of the well-insulated house, underfloor heating.
One of the most adaptable elements of the property is the full-footprint basement. Where once it was a grass playground with a trampoline, swings and slide, now it features an art gallery, gym equipment, several storage areas, a pair of offices and a large table for arts and crafts. “It’s amazingly soundproofed so would make a good music studio, or a place for an 18m-long pool. When I was building my boat, I could be banging away at 5am without disturbing anyone,” recalls Tim.
Initially though, the space was used as a joinery factory for the team of builders, welders, furniture makers and – unusually – architecture graduates who were all working together on site. “Stuart had carefully thought through the design and we wanted to honour that in the way that we built. It’s not a conventional house so we couldn’t just buy things off the shelf. Luckily, lots of great people happened to be around at the right time to help us,” explains Jo. “When we had a choice between money or quality, we always held onto the quality. Time was the thing that tended to shift. We’d just wait until we’d earnt enough to do the next bit.”
With its exceptional craftsmanship and attention to detail (one bunkbed for instance, comes with a flywheel designed by architect Fergus Knox), it’s easy to see why the property has won 10 architecture and design awards – including a prestigious RIBA National Award in 2015. It also featured on the first series of RIBA’s Grand Designs House of the Year programme. “To achieve an award-winning building, you really have to go the extra mile so it’s an endorsement of all the hard work from everyone involved,” says Tim. “It’s funny, because there’s lots of glass it might seem like it’s quite public but it’s extremely private. There are deeply contemplative spaces where you can focus on a task and not be distracted.”
Welcome distractions however, come in the form of the local community, from the pastor’s cake on the green gatherings to Sift coffee shop and The Good Wine Shop in Kew village and a yoga studio around the corner. “It’s like being in the countryside but you’re on the tube with the river and world’s best gardens on your doorstep,” says Tim. “One of our favourite things is going to Kew Gardens in summer, late in the day when we have it to ourselves.”
With their children now grown up, the couple are ready for a new phase of life. “We said from the beginning that we saw ourselves as stewards of the house. Living here, it’s easy to forget how remarkable it is and what a unique thing it is to be part of,” says Jo. For prospective buyers wanting to add their own stamp on the place, a half-built artwork designed by multi-disciplinary artist Wolfgang Buttress awaits (should they want to purchase it). “It’s a screen of acrylic tubes that hangs in the glazed link like a light and we thought that someone who appreciates the house might like the fun of assembling it,” concludes Tim.
Kew House is for sale exclusively with Story of Home, click here for more information and explore more design-led homes for sale here
