RIBA Regional Awards Winner 2014: London
Otts Yard, Tufnell Park
vPPR Architects for a private client
Contract £693,922. GIA 243m2
Two new houses on the site of a derelict workshop surrounded by 23 party walls and accessed by a long narrow passage. Only in London are such sites valuable enough to generate high-architecture responses such as this: twin houses riffing on the trapezoidal shape of the site, breaking this down into a riot of triangulation that runs through from the entrance courtyard to the planted roofs. Complex but not overly so, it seems. They’re not big, but they make the most of what they have by inserting mezzanines into the volume. The result, said the judges, is folly-like, but the sense of fun is balanced by a rigorous attention to detail.