Slim pickings: W2's narrow house
We knew that space was at a premium in Notting Hill, but when architect Luke Tozer showed us around his remarkable narrow home off Westbourne Grove, we realised just how much. Emily Paine reports
Above: The facade of Luke Tozer's narrow house
Anyone would agree that finding the ideal house in London – a house of perfect proportions which fits your taste and is located just where you want to live – is difficult. Confronted with this situation, fewer people would be brave enough, to build their own, and an even smaller percentage would launch enthusiastically into building their dream home on a piece of land only 8ft wide at the front, and essentially made up of an alley between two tall townhouses. Architect Luke Tozer, however, found exactly such a plot of land just off Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill, and has successfully built a beautiful, light and entirely practical family home, that is currently cosily littered with the toys and debris of his sons, Mark, two, and Alexander, six months. In fact, Alexander was born of within weeks of the house being built and the family moving in.
Luke – the Tozer of Pitman Tozer Architects based in Notting Hill's Westbourne Studios – concedes that, without an architect’s eye, the land on which his home is built was initially unappealing. ‘It was a dump, basically,’ he explains. ‘A small cottage had been built on this land before, which was derelict when we first saw it in 2005.’
Luke and his wife Charlotte made a planning application to develop the site but first had to contend with the Local Residents’ Association, whose treasurer, secretary and chair lived within a few houses of the property. Their plans were deferred twice before finally being approved.
Further negotiations were needed to make the land into a habitable space. The process of obtaining planning permission and demolishing the existing property took six tense months, and that was followed by nine months of preparation before construction of the house finally started.
Luke wanted the house to be as eco-friendly as possible, and opted for laying pipes 50ft under the garden to facilitate a ground source heat pump heating system. When I look blank, Luke explains: ‘It’s a way of getting energy from the earth and using it to heat the house. There are loops in the ground which – summer or winter, night or day – are at about 12ºC, so in the winter you pump the water-ethanol mix down into the pipe-work at about -4 degrees, and it comes out at 12 degrees – 16 degrees warmer.’
The pipe-work is set to remain in its underground lair for the next thousand years, with the only moving part being the heat-pump, a washing-machine sized piece of kit which is housed in the house’s ‘engine room’. ‘It’s very efficient,’ Luke continues. ‘It uses about a quarter or a third of the energy that a gas boiler would use. Obviously it’s more expensive to install than a conventional system but over 15 or 20 years it will pay itself back. Whether you subscribe to arguments about global warming or not, just building a house that uses less energy is actually just good sense, ultimately from a financial as well as an energy-saving point of view.’
I had expected to find a multitude of foldaway furniture solutions to fit into the narrow space. But the house has been so cleverly designed that none of the rooms are that small and such ingenuity is unnecessary. The narrow front of the house holds single bedrooms with large windows, the central corridor where natural light is lacking holds the utility rooms and WCs. The plan opens out at the back to allow a spacious glass-roofed sitting room with a mezzanine, which opens out into a courtyard garden.
The features are unique and beautiful – the spiral staircase is made of sustainably sourced larch from a monastery in Austria, where the monks use the off-cuts from making the ornate, honey-coloured staircases in a power generator that gives electricity to the local village. The skylight at the top of the staircase is used for a chimney effect – when it’s open in the summer, it draws the hot air out of the house and lets the cool air in. The house was built for £500,000; the temperate, peaceful family home that has been created is priceless.
Enamoured with the house and Luke’s innovative design, I ask him what made him want to be an architect. ‘My father was an architect, and while he actively discouraged me from becoming one, I think I visited too many properties in need of work when I was younger. We often lived in building sites – I feel very at home on them. The smell of plaster dust takes me back to my childhood!’
Finally, I wonder what the building’s done for him in terms of his reputation as an architect. ‘Well, our worst nightmare is to be pigeon-holed as the ‘narrow house people’ – “Oh yes, they only do narrow houses. It’s only for tall thin people.” I’d just like people to know what we’ve managed to do with limited opportunities.’ And Luke has certainly made the most of a seemingly small opportunity.