Camden Studio and Gallery

Location: London

Brick Manufacturers: Wienerberger Limited / UK Other

Brick Names: Cambridgeshire Weathered Buff / UK Other

Architect: Timothy Smith & Jonathan Taylor LLP

Brickwork Contractor: Purple Construction Ltd

Our clients purchased a townhouse on a square in Camden that had a derelict garage at the end of its garden. The raised ground and upper floors of the townhouse were refurbished to form a large flat, while the lower ground floor was extended and converted to form a gallery with accommodation for visiting artists. The garage was taken down and a painting studio constructed for one of the clients, who is an artist.

The language of the studio borrows from Victorian sheds and workshops. Essentially a very simple building with a pitched corrugated tin roof, the studio contains a masonry aedicule that holds storage, a sink and WC. Externally, the careful brickwork is augmented with moments of architectural elaboration carried out in different brick-bonds. The symmetrical garden facade terminates the view from the gallery, which the studio faces across a lushly planted garden.

The gallery has two large rooms, one top-lit with brick pamment floors and the other side-lit through a window set into the apsidal end of the room. A smaller room can be used for display or as a bedroom for the artist in residence. Externally, the gallery extension is articulated in a stripped classical language with brick pilasters with brick and tile capitals framing openings and a niche on the garden elevation, and header and soldier course brickwork, creasing tiles and painted timber mouldings making up the entablature. In order to accommodate the arrangement of niches the walls of the extension are over half a metre thick in places. The green roof of the building is planted with wildflowers.

Brick was critical to achieving the architectural language we were looking for. It was not only sympathetic to the surrounding historic buildings but could provide the robust but elegant forms we wanted.