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Raw Material

London, UK

A 1960s townhouse in Chelsea, stripped back and then sensitively reimagined by architects Pricegore, with British brutalism as the inspiration

“What could brutalism be today?” This was the starting point for architect Dingle Price when his practice, Pricegore, was tasked with the renovation and extension of a 1960s house in London’s Chelsea. The mid-century building, part of a row of townhouses, is not what you might expect from a well-heeled neighbourhood that has been described as a “Victorian citadel” – and nor is the interior, with its cast-concrete staircases, columns and sand-blasted exposed lintels, softened by reclaimed timber flooring and lime-plastered walls.

The owners, a couple with two teenage children, bought the house in 2020, becoming only its second owners. The brief to Pricegore was to upgrade the whole house to modern standards and to “make it more suitable for contemporary family life,” says Price, but also “to be respectful to the building”.

The practice is known for giving Georgian and Victorian properties sensitive remodels, but this was an opportunity to apply the same ethos to something in the more recent past: “It still called for that thoughtful response to its heritage,” says Price – to treat the house “confidently and purposefully, with the right amount of sensitivity, but also not lavishly celebrating it as a masterpiece. Although it was a good piece of architecture, it wasn’t something that needed to be preserved in its original state.”

The house was stripped back to its masonry walls and solid concrete floors so that all the necessary upgrades to services could take place. It also received a comprehensive thermal upgrade, with external insulation to the existing roof, internal wood fibre insulation, insulated ground slabs and double glazing. An air source heat pump provides hot water and underfloor heating. The new concrete elements, all poured on site, shows just how crafted this material can be, from the angular steps that run down to the new kitchen diner to the kitchen worktops.

Having noticed that the adjacent Victorian properties had gardens that were 1.5m lower than the mid-century block, the architects started to wonder whether the 1960s terrace may have replaced a Victorian equivalent – and that consequently, its foundations might actually be lower. A bit of probing, and they were proved right, unlocking the possibility of a lower-ground-floor extension. Since it steps down from the front of the house, the new addition benefits from high ceilings and a glorious feeling of space and light.

The lushly planted garden (by landscape designers FFLO), viewed through floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors, combined with the concrete plus a restrained single circular rooflight, have more of an air of Brazilian modernism than British brutalism, although the latter is where Price looked for his principal inspiration. All the glazing helps the light to penetrate deep into the building, something important to consider when extending a home with no openings to the side – and the architects have also added rooflights at the top of the building to wash light from top to bottom.

Further changes to the layout have turned this five-bedroom house into a very generous three-bedroom property. At ground-floor level, the garage is now a utility area. Two reception rooms sit on the first floor (the rear one overlooking a living roof on top of the extension; the front one used as a movie room that can double as a guest bedroom), with two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. The top floor – once containing three bedrooms – is now a luxuriously proportioned master suite.

The experience of entering the house is quite the journey: off the busy street outside and into the calm, timber-lined hallway, before opening the door to the lofty proportions of the extension. “For most people it’s a very big surprise,” says Price, “because you’re then looking over this very cubic volume of the living space, and the garden with its tree ferns, which have this exotic quality. It has the sort of scale you just wouldn’t expect from one of the these houses, and it’s quite dramatic, that moment of reveal.” He also talks about how the wider house is so well-connected to nature despite its urban setting, with framed tree canopies and the living roof as well as the main garden.

“We think of the project as a collaboration with the original architects, Morgan and Branch,” concludes Price. “They designed a house suited to their era, and for the speculative market. Sixty years later we have reshaped it around the specific requirements of one family, and refitted it to standards that will hopefully last the next 60 years and beyond.’