Vandelvelt reconfigures a London apartment around a bespoke steel staircase

Buildings.

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Robert Pyecroft, Jamie-Scott Baxter

London- and Berlin-based architecture practice Vandelvelt has completed the reconfiguration of a small east London apartment around a bespoke white powder-coated perforated steel and expanded mesh dogleg staircase.

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The apartment is located within the former gymnasium of a Victorian school building and was first converted to residential use in the 1990s. It had a small landing and kitchen on a mezzanine platform, awkwardly reached by two space-consuming timber staircases. A bedroom and bathroom were housed under the mezzanine, adjacent to a double-height living room. Vandelvelt’s client wanted more space upstairs, with a flexible study that could be used as a guest room, while retaining light and height in the existing entrance hall.

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The new staircase increases the floor area of the mezzanine enough to accommodate a formally sectioned off room and a bright dining area on the mezzanine, in place of a desk on an open landing. It also allows light from first-floor windows to filter down through a pattern punched in the steel. “Softening the formality of the staircase is an integrated shelving system, mirrored glass and zoned painted backdrops framing the staircase against the walls”, says Vandelvelt’s Jamie-Scott Baxter

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Louvered shutters open out over the stair, mezzanine and entrance, providing an internal balcony. They admit light to the rest of the apartment when the room is being used as a study, but afford privacy and acoustic separation when it is in use by guests. The shutters are painted to complement coloured zones around the new staircase that take their cues from the client’s Pop Art collection.

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Prefabrication of the staircase reduced costs and minimised time on site, says Baxter. “This form of procurement also allowed ideas to be rigorously tested with the fabricator, such as maximally reducing the dimensions of the staircase so as to gain space in the apartment, and control over finishes and construction detailing”.

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