When we first entered our new project in West London it looked like something straight from Wolfgang Tillmans’ world.
Then the curtain moved away and the process of peeling away got going. Removing the layers of lives enacted in the building since the 70s gradually revealed both the original and the more recent building within.
Preceding the 70s, the grand Edwardian buildings lining Clifton Gardens were inter-connected and used as a hotel. Post disastrous fire of 1974 which did away with the original timber, the interiors were rebuilt using modern materials of the day: steel, reinforced concrete, blockwork and plasterboards over metal studs.
The suspended plasterboard ceilings and internal partitions now gone, the reinforced concrete floors, steel beams and blockwork piers, open up the large, open-plan spaces. They are even larger than the original grand Edwardian rooms as concrete and steel span longer distances than timber joists and stud walls used to do. Some less so grand nooks under the vaults present opportunities for slotting away the services.
