London, United Kingdom16:31
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Fitzroy House

Location
London
Year
2025
Typology
Residential
Area
240 m²
Interior design
Wigglesworth
Photography
—
Contractor
—
01

Light, without losing the rooms

A Victorian plan carved into small rooms, each with one window and a door in the wrong place. The owners wanted more light and did not want a loft — which ruled out the obvious answer of removing every wall. Two walls came down. The other nine had to justify themselves, and nine of them did.

The chimney breast stays. It is inconvenient, it costs a metre of the reception room, and it is the only reason the front of the house still reads as somewhere you arrive rather than somewhere you pass through.
Reception, before the partition came down
The same view, with the breast kept
The floor steps down three risers between the front and back of the house. Levelling it would have cost the ceiling height in the kitchen, so the step became the threshold instead.
The kitchen, on the only blind wall
Storage taken to the ceiling, not to the window

Looking back toward the entrance, late afternoon.

The main bedroom, which lost a window and gained a wall
The smallest room, kept small
The stair was rebuilt in the same position with a different balustrade. Moving it was priced twice and refused twice, which was the correct answer both times.
Lime plaster, left unpainted for a year
Reclaimed board, laid to the old direction

Front to back, with both remaining walls in shot.

Every wall we left standing had to earn it. Two did not, and they are the two that went.

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