architect graham modlen
architect graham modlen
it took tenacity to hold on to a vision of affordable, spacious, open-plan accommodation from what was a redundant victorian village-scale primary school.
three out of the four classrooms have been overhauled. a new top lit stairwell inserted into one roof.
another roof has been raised with a timber clerestory roof dormer cut into it, to accommodate new bedrooms and a bathroom.
elsewhere a new flat glass roof covers a passage and a pitch glass roofed living area.
the buildings are on a tight site set between a flint twelfth-century church, a terrace of cottages and a school-master’s house.
2015 - 2019 £450,00 spend mike hadi, structural engineer
3 roof spaces now defining the lifted middle unit, ex single storey classroom
3 opened up and connected interiors
clerestorey staircase
3 newly top-lit connected spaces
clerestory bedroom windows
front studio - looking up to the re-structured roof and the bed-deck dividing the space
2 bed deck areas, a balcony + a top lit staircase
card site model
a figure ground site plan
study elevation
study elevation 2
study room in the roof
ground floor plan studies
for a young couple of medics and their growing family moving from a cramped flat.
I worked initially with chris hardinge, architect. tim macfarlane - engineer, did the structural design.
I worked with the client’s builder. we stripped this dilapidated property two-storey terrace house, opening the ground floor, full width to the garden, daylight windows into the staircase, a master-bed suite in the expanded roof with a full height rear facing sash window and dormer roof, thus making a 3-storey house.
2013 - 2014. £400,000 budget.
the philosopher father of my wandworth client had just bought an end of terrace house with planning permission to extend up as roof garden. i added to this planning permission to make alterations to the facade beneath and re-organise the entrance doors and windows around the ground floor. like the client, i wanted a wild hairy-ness to the planting, and privacy to the exposed corner setting of the property.
2014 - £70,000 spend. tim macfarlane, engineer
family room from the garden
top-level master bedroom with a long rooflight in the front roof slope
hairy roof garden, re-organised ground floor windows and doors
high box planting, pool-like walk-on flat roof glass
blackheath, vanbrugh castle apartment - chris hardinge and I worked on an art-deco-inspired bathroom installation in his sister and husband’s bathroom apartment in vanburgh castle, blackheath, south london. chris conceived the idea and I organised the installations. it featured glass wall tiles, mirror tiles and mirrored cupboards, new period fittings, sanitaryware, shower enclosure and floor tiling. work by malcolm connolly/build, laszlo klein/heating, greg wozniak/tiling and glass build.
£60,000 spend, 2011
camberwell grove - i was asked by a playwrite client to re-organise a small kitchen and bathroom tucked behind a lounge in a 1st floor 2-bedroom flat in a georgian terrace house. work by kris bela.
£70,000 spend, 2014
beckenham - a builder developer asked me to draw up extension plans to a mid-war 4-bedroom house. the one element of interest was a glass screen open fireplace that could help separate one area of a full-width garden-facing living room. work by joel vian/build, steel frame/dario kosnicki.
£100,000 spend, 2012
highbury - a full size, top-lit kitchen/family room was added into a small garden at the back of a typical 2-reception room interior terrace house.
£50,000, 2011.
canonbury - the 2-room ground floor kitchen and living room of an ‘80’s ex-council house were opened up, work by dinko kolev.
£35,000, 2008
apartment interior with an art-deco-inspired bathroom re-fit.
an open-plan sitting room, kitchen and semi-concealed bathroom
full house width folding doors open to reveal a kitchen - family - sitting areas, defined by a kitchen column+island and a glass fronted open fire+flue imbedded in a thick partition
3rd full size room featuring a slot-like flat roof light.
opening up the kitchen and living room
my client, a local builder-developer, asked me to take a scheme, with planning approval, to construction. to demolish a terrace of three garages and lock-ups and insert four 1-up-1-down houses.
we went with CLT - at engineer mike hadi’s suggestion - and only otherwise made two other minor adjustments to the scheme.
each dwelling now has top-lit open-plan 1st floor studios and red bricks to match an adjoining sub-station.
2017 - 2019. £750,000 spend. mike hadi engineer
the lock-ups
CLT model
2 trees are planted, parking bays with kerb-stones, resin-crete is laid and copper planter boxes will finish the external works
fish eye of studio interior
sketch infill site plan
infill house street view sketch
elevation sketch
3D, 3 floor interiors diagram
study room in the roof. sketch
study in the roof, sketch #2
driving out of London on arterial roads, I mused on the condition of the roadside houses and the pressures of 24-hour traffic on householders.
I sketched plans of the inter-war type of house the type I grew up in - and imagined existing rooms and new spaces, back, side, top, etc.; I began to visualise other pressures on the multi-generational household: size, age-range needs and abilities.
I drew new gaps, maps, groupings, new interiors and patterns in plan and section of four real places on and off such roads.
these patterns suggested new shared structures and organisations. plans at two or three scales tackle interior detail and the neighbourhood.
what remains is the future: to investigate situations in which the proposition can be practically tested.
the ground floor of two semi-detached houses, with new rooms at the back
a terrace of mid-war houses on kingsbury road, north london
a plan of fragments of the kingsbury houses - new and old
an expansion of rooms from the re-organised houses
a section through the kingsbury houses
sheikh zayed bridge, abu dhabi - my biggest role at zaha hadid’s office was as project architect for an 800m long, 2- six-lane road decks cantilevering off a central concrete and steel wave/dune form bridge connecting the city island to the mainland.
1997 - 2010 £100m spend for the works dept. of abu dhabi
dover - the RIBA organised a competition inviting ideas to re-connect the town to the shore and the dock, currently bisected by the M20 motorway. i won a £500 honorarium.
2005
nairobi 2030 metro-master plan - working with a team of london-based designers at austin-smith:lord, nairobi based economists, planners and managers and leeds based transport planners. we came 3rd.
2008
the bridge structure splays outwards as it tip-toes across the shores of abu dhabi island. 1997 - 2010. photo by hufton and crow, courtesy zaha hadid architects.
3D-CAD model steel arch-beam design by archirodon-site based contractor engineer ramzi ilyad
steel plate beam manufacture, jebel ali, dubai.
main channel span steel arches. concrete cantilever road-deck beams + marina piers
under deck lighting concepts study plan
plan study of patterns of lighting in arches above and beneath road deck, projected into the water
block, rock and ‘flow’ plan painted sketches, plus a hillside perspective diagram of new + old dover
imagined view of from durham hill
dover castle + dock silhouetted on the horizon with new dover laid out in front
the city growing in blue with expanding settlements defined along major routes in a new metro-map
swirling rivers + existing cross town rail-lines
in the early nineties the city came under attack from IRA bombs. this was a a moment to think about infrastructure, or building by other means. these events led to thoughts and instigating some other architectural change, a shift in dynamics. a series of paintings and drawings were conceived. new spaces carved out for new performance spaces in the city.
the wider, older, 18th C thames
the city re-imagined with blue-open spaces, new-river/canal lines, bridges and buildings
a painting of an interminable grey-fog lingering low over the city and thames, broken only by the lights of new structures
fragments of soane’s bank of england, stirling’s mappin+ webb site re-imagined in mid-air ‘after the bomb’
i worked at austin-smith:lord developping concepts for the refurbishment and development of land around the 18th century fort. this arts complex of new structures in the sand were to integrate and subsume and include a ‘70’s cultural centre building. 2007 - 2010.
a plan of intersecting paths and road projecting outwards from the fort.
new sunken passages and buildings in the crust of the earth. remembered, well trodden short-cuts across the city to new developments on adjacent blocks.
at zaha hadid’s office i briefly led a competition team to design buildings on ex- railway land + tracks. a series of study paintings led me to consider how to integrate, how to fold the land. to re-invent the shed, to mutiply its use.
passages overlaid across the site
saw-tooth roof sheds scattered, overlapping, across the site
wh smith forecourt building was to be removed. the ticketing hall inside kings cross was to be re-located and the front facade of kings cross terminus brick shed was to be refurbished. this led to a more wholesale approach to lands to each side
connections outwards
interior spaces
the rush of traffic at the foot of pentonville road
the burger bar and the side of st. pancras terminal
6 plan studies of the triangle area in front of kings cross
plan, areas, 3D courtyard blocks study
rotational massing elevations study. long railway line like walls
concept sketch - long blocks, wall lines + gaps
a dancing place .. is a scheme made up of paintings, plans, sections, etc. of buildings, landscape and objects.
what a wonderful world .. was a pop-video themed festival held in groningen, northern holland, to celebrate the city’s 850th anniversary. working at zaha hadid’s office, this was my 1st built scheme. 1990.
alexandrina .. is the library in alexandria, egypt. a competition entry design. 1991.
the chamber arts theatre .. moscow. competition drawings for the refurbishment and insertion of new facilities. 1992.
performing furniture .. were weekly demonstrations at spitalfields market, of theatre-agit-prop-furniture. 1993-94
see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil - 3 imagined audience members
dance hall ceiling - a floating figure pointing to the domed space
a colonnade - kirk brandon’s shoulders as steps, hands on the colonnade roof, balcony and ramp
outside at dusk - a dancer sits looking up at the observatory-like tower, whilst another figure appears above, silhouetted at the top
a worm’s eye 3D view of the site for the music video pavilion. office of zaha hadid.
looking up through the see-through decks
a night time shot. copyright hans werleman. image courtesy office of zaha hadid.
a site plan of new + old buildings.
an exploded isometric diagram of 3 layers, 2 layers of new + old structures and a composite plan.
moving portable stage structures
a wearable 10 foot long waist high table-skirt on wheels
a theatre built inside spitalfields .. 2 curved bleacher seat stands, each side of a low stage, orchestra area and furniture-props
paintings, drawings, often remembered places transposed into architectural settings
conceptual mountainside masterplan painting. 1993
plan and views of a mountain-side library intersected by zig-zag roads. 1994
a figure, standing at the intersection, loses his hat looking up towards a top-lit balcony
an axo view of a building at an intersection of passages.1987
a dancing figure, a fort-like theatre and a distant plane flying overhead. an imagined, moroccan-inspired landscape. 1985
a yellow temple on a background hillside slope and a mountain climber in the foreground
the stepped temple floors with a faceted dome interior. 1988
liverpool - a futuristic re-imagined mersey river-side view. the 3 graces reflected in the water. 2005
