Holland Park Villa
A glazed box and miniature garden inserted into the centre of an Edwardian villa infuse daylight into the heart of the building and into a capacious excavated basement
Interiors by Festen Architecture
Gardens by Jinny Blom
Photography by Taran Wilkhu
Our brief was to substantially enlarge the existing building to fully realise its potential as a large family home, but to do so with minimal external visual impact, adhering to narrow local planning restrictions.
The core of the design is the reconfigured stair, inserted asymmetrically into a four-storey void extending the entire height of the house from attic level down into a huge new basement extending under the entire footprint of the existing building. The external wall of the stair void is fully glazed, pulling daylight into the heart of the plan at all levels, and creating views onto a new courtyard garden from the stair flights and half landings criss-crossing the void.
The basement contains a games room, health spa, bar and entertaining area, acoustically insulated from the neighbours.
A 1.5 metre wide strip of walk-on pavement glazing provides daylight into the bar and spa, with a wine cellar and sauna extending under the garden, provided with 1 metre of soil cover.
At ground floor all the main reception spaces and kitchen are interlinked, some with double aspects across the courtyard, the living and dining room opening up onto a walled south-facing garden to one side.
The original roofscape of the building was an ad hoc assembly of additions with a light well located behind the encircling ridge lines of the main building frontages. This is now fully infilled to accommodate four bedrooms with bathrooms, arranged around a generous central landing with a large retractable rooflight above.
