Classical references bring new life to converted Camden gallery

‘My painting practice is very much about shape and framing,’ says Rose Davey, the artist and client behind Corner 7, a new private gallery/artist-in-residence apartment/’project space’, separate studio and maisonette in Camden, designed by Smith & Taylor Architects. The project rebuilds and reinhabits a four-storey mid-Victorian semi-detached villa that had been split into bedsits, as well as a double garage in the garden that opened onto the perpendicular road. ‘I was immediately drawn to Jonathan and Timothy’s sense of symmetry and sensitivity to those types of proportions, shapes and spaces,’ she adds.

An 18-board piece hanging on the studio rear wall with the half-moon window above demonstrates Davey’s work. The new building sits in a two-part composition with a ground floor back extension to the villa, both visible along the southern side of Rochester Square through black iron railings.

The extension is flat-roof with two sets of French doors to the garden and a blind window that continues those on the side elevation. The studio has one French door to the garden and an almost epic street-facing facade with an arched transom window above the wide doorway abutted by quarter-columns, topped with a pitched roof structure and soffit that recalls Inigo Jones’ St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden.

These two creative practices – artistic and architectural – seem barely linked. Davey knew Jonathan Taylor before the project. However, she is also a lecturer on art history, often covering the High Renaissance, so when Taylor brought images of paintings by Piero della Francesca and Antonello da Messina to their first meeting, the practice seemed right. ‘It was important to have character and features,’ Davey adds, ‘like the curved wall and brick floor. When artists put work into the space, it is a collaboration with what is already there.’

Smith and Taylor had their own motivations too. The practice is interested in traditional and classical architectural language, which you may remember from their Hoxton house extension (RIBAJ July 2021). They feel this has wider resonance with the public than contemporary approaches. Corner 7 is a small public space, and the pair was keen that the additions suggest they had always been there. The Hoxton scheme was inspired by the choragic monument of Thrasyllos in Athens, a reference used on the grand villas on the streets around Corner 7 when they were built too.

‘I don’t find the standard response of a rendered glass box interesting, and they are easy to design,’ says Taylor, by Teams from the US where the two are teaching. Practically, this stylistic approach also lent itself to the brief, which required lots of hanging space. The practice couldn’t articulate walls using windows, but depended on niches, pilasters, cornices and entablature.

The resulting scheme smartens up a slightly scruffy stretch. Davey was pointed to the studio site by her friend Francesca Anfossi, who runs the ceramics studio and workshop next door. It was for sale, but the house came with it – hence the idea for a ‘project space’ developed. The rest of the street is a mishmash of activity and architectural styles. This one gives the road an opportunity to breathe again.

The work Smith & Taylor has done is both considerable and light. The studio replicates the existing form, position and footprint of the garage; it is surprisingly similar yet greatly transformed. The extension reorganises window openings to regularise with those above. The two share opposite sides of the garden, yet are deliberately not connected. The formality of these elevations suggests it, but the facing French doors are offset for privacy. There is no path between. Both the studio and gallery, and much of the garden, are dug down to improve ceiling heights for making and displaying work.

Internally, the project space follows a format that is sensitive to the villa, with a more robust utilitarian aesthetic appropriate to the lower ground level. There are yellow-painted kitchen units, emerald green metro tiles in the shower room, and timber floors. The added flourish is the curved wall in the upper gallery. From here the main display space steps down with its terracotta brick stair and floor, cloche top light and pleasant views of the garden.

The studio is completely different. Straight ahead on entry a monk staircase leads to an open attic store under the roof; winding steps turn down to the right – all part of a concrete-block aedicule. Blocks push through to create display niches on one side and shelves in the WC behind. This ‘building within a building’ dominates the studio, giving a raw, un-precious feel that is a tad pomo, with pink-painted steel trusses that colour-match the exterior corduroy skirting around both buildings. This was Davey’s choice when she felt the project was getting ‘a bit too serious’, inspired by a lecture she delivered on Philip Guston.

There were two risky moments. First, Davey had to take on the house in addition to the studio and make that work. The other was with the planners, who were ‘throwing around words like pastiche’, explains Taylor. Why was that risky? Because the fanlight, skirting, aedicule, quartered columns, niches for work and places to work in – as well as the programme, idea to collaborate with artists and Rochester Square ceramicists – are all full of spirit-raising joy.