Khan House is a radical reconstruction of a listed but derelict Victorian building in London, to create living spaces, a studio and a gallery for an artist.

The history of the existing building is one of expedience. Speculatively built by 19th Century developers, it was adapted and distorted over time to suit circumstance. This was of most concern in the basement, where the floor had been dug out and the foundations sheared off to provide extra space. These circumstances led us an understanding of the building as both metaphorically and literally floating. Conceptually, therefore, the project becomes about refounding the building and in doing so, offering a measure of it – an ordering which would allow it to be understood materially, spatially and temporally.

The concrete, material fact of the new foundation extends to become a physical entity within the new spaces, establishing their relationships.

Both materially and programmatically dense, it allows the spaces around it to become ambivalent. Rather than remaining as cellular rooms, they become continuous spaces which shift in section and extend the length of the deep plan. The double height space of the gallery is created against the street, bringing light into the lower ground studio. This establishes the public face of the building. The balcony of the domestic space above overlooks this, but can be closed off via a series of sliding screens.

The concrete is poured in situ against douglas fir shuttering and oscillates between rawness and sensuality, the brutal and the precise. The shuttering marks rescale the building, establishing a new dimensional rhythm throughout which defines staircases and the scale of built in furniture, as well as the relationship of the concrete to the timber linings. These recall the process of the shuttering and this relationship establishes a conversation about time, which begins to expose the larger conversation of the history of the house at one scale, and everyday acts of inhabitation, at the other.