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0 Comments | Evening Standard; London (UK), Jul 28, 2010 | by Ruth Bloomfield
MOST architects dream of building a house but the scarcity of land in the capital meant James Wright had to settle for remodelling an old one when he and his wife, film-maker Tamara Tracz, bought the kind of late Victorian terraced property you see running up and down endless London streets. This house is now only conforming from the front. Internally it is an impressive piece of sustainable technology and modern design — the most deceptive of homes.
Wright, 42, a director of Macdonald Wright Architects (macdonaldwright. com) and Tracz, 40, have three children — Riva, four, Constantin, two and 15-week-old Lila.
They bought the property in Dalston for about Pounds 900,000, right at the peak of the market in 2007.
The couple had been living in Stoke Newington but moved because they needed more family space. Wright says: “I really did want to build from scratch and spent a lot of time looking for a site. Of course it is really difficult in London. Developers snap up sites very fast and what is left is not worth having, so in the end we decided to buy a badly run-down house and strip it back.” Which they did almost the instant they took possession of the keys, while at the same time drawing up plans for its reinvention and acquiring planning permission. The work proper began in mid-2008 and took just over a year to complete with a budget of about Pounds 700,000.
The facade of the property was carefully restored: the brickwork was cleaned and repointed, and the original windows were removed, repaired and then put back in place.
Inside the approach was dramatically different, involving radical change.
One of the major structural projects was to insert a steel frame into the ground floor of the house, allowing Wright to knock down supporting walls.
The original living and dining rooms have been made into a single space, with a partial partition of plasterboard between it and the kitchen. “It gives us a lot of flexibility,” said Wright. “We could take it down very easily.”
Meanwhile, the rickety existing kitchen extension was rebuilt and clad in Pounds 25,000-worth of stunning patinated copper, which changes its colour with the weather.
The kitchen itself is immaculate white, by Bulthaup, and the floors — as in almost every room of the house — are pale, oversize Douglas fir boards treated with soap and lye. The walls, it will not be a surprise to learn, are also white — chalk -based Biofa paint that needed five coats to perfect but are now wipe-clean.
The downstairs fireplaces were stripped back to the brick and painted — you’ve guessed it — white.
Which brings us to a very practical question. Who, with two young children and a newborn baby, would choose to live in a house that is so relentlessly white? Even the older children’s shared bedroom is white — albeit decorated with some cute black transfers “from a shop on Brick Lane”.
Riva has apparently not yet discovered the delights of My Little Pony wallpaper. “I find white just very relaxing,” says Wright. “It is sort of contemplative. We have got a lot of art and I like to be able to look at things without clutter. I find it quite stressful to be in cluttered environments.”
And if Riva did ask for pink sparkly wallpaper? “That would be all right,” he smiles. “It’s her bedroom.”
The couple’s artwork is displayed not only on walls, but also in a series of alcoves, which are a feature of almost every room in the house. They are lit with strips of LED lights which, as well as being low-energy, give a soft alternative to harsh overhead lights. “It gives a very subtle level of light, and I like the idea of areas of light and shadow in a room,” says Wright. For all the squeaky alabaster perfection, he did decide to preserve some original features, notably stained glass in the door and family bathroom, and several iron fireplaces. “When you make the space very white and then you put in a very detailed stained-glass window it becomes something much stronger,” says Wright. “You can really see the quality of the light coming through the windows.” Originally the property was laid out with six bedrooms. It has now been reconfigured to give only three. Of the former bedrooms, one has been converted into a large en-suite bathroom for the master bedroom — which also has a dressing room built into the attic space — while another is used as a library and projection room
wrought iron curtain rods
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