Silvertown | Ash Sakula
Britain | 2004 | hard use
Project Information
| Address: | Boxley Street, London |
| Work Type: | new built |
Description
Ash Sakula’s design for a small housing project in London is about the reconsideration of housing standards and regulations.
Here, the circulation space is the focus point: the hall - renamed ‘sorting zone’ - and the kitchen are the most important parts of the plan. The ‘sorting zone’ is a room in itself, a polyvalent room, capable of being used for many different functions during the course of a day or during various years of occupation: wardrobes, sorting, storing, homeworking. The kitchen is a living, meeting and children’s room as well as a space for cooking. Both rooms, the kitchen and the hall, focus on the communal aspect of a dwelling rather than the individual and thereby promote a highly sociable concept of dwelling space. The plan reverses typical spatial priorities, it is about excess space in spaces that are usually designed down to the minimum. Whilst the use of this ‘sorting zone’ is completely determined by the architects (the hall comes completely fitted with wardrobes, desks, shelves, etc.), the scheme demonstrates nicely how circulation space can be used as an extra device in an imaginative way in order to make very tight spaces that much more interesting. The three remaining rooms are reduced down to a minimum and can be used in a variety of ways. A small living room with TV and two bedrooms, or three bedrooms for a shared household.References
'Ash Sakula Architects, London', A+T, 2004, pp. 6-21.
'First look: colour takes over Silvertown', Building Design, 2004, p. 4.
'High hopes for low costs', Building Design, 2001, pp. 10-12.
'Silvertown housing in London', Detail, 45, 2005, pp. 1286-88.
Young, E., 'Wrapped attention', RIBA Journal, 111, 2004, pp. 52-56.