residence
Niki Borowiecki, 2013
81a Grove Park, SE5 8LE
One of a pair of modern houses on a sensitive site in a conservation area. A triple-height staircase atrium brings light into the heart of the house and ground floor areas open onto courtyard gardens on three sides.
Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye
176, 185, 40, 63, 12, P13
Springbank is one of a pair of semi-detached houses completed in 2014 by Niki Borowiecki on a site which had been previously part of the gardens of 37 and 38 Grove Park.
Architect and teacher Jeanne Sillett has written of the houses:
The strategic idea to set back a well-mannered 2-storey volume behind a carefully articulated high boundary wall is clever, quiet and apt. The paired houses and their flanking courts, terraces and small orchard-y gardens are gently and succinctly embedded in plan and section. The houses are simultaneously compact and generous, their external spaces nicely positioned and unobtrusive. The sedum roofs contribute to integrated sustainability and also offer near neighbours a formal and attractive view.
Layers of brick and rendered wall provide backdrops for the changing play of light and shadow through the trees, reinforcing their presence.
This new pair of houses is phrased as a small building nestled within gardens rather than a large building commanding a garden. The top-lit hall/stair in each of the proposed houses reinforces the quality of internal focus and connection with an intimate scale of exterior space, in contrast to the grandeurs of the earlier villas and Victorian houses. The realities and pleasures of contemporary life seem properly reflected and enhanced, privately and publicly, in these design moves.
