Modern Mews — living room
Whole House · 2016

Modern Mews

Paddington, W2

A four-storey Paddington mews house reordered around a central oak stair, with rice-paper sliding doors and a glazed front floor that drops light all the way to the lower ground.

Location
Paddington, W2
Year
2016
Type
Whole house · mews
Status
Complete · RIBA London Award · House of the Year final four
The brief

A mews, reordered around its stair.

The original house was a four-storey mews with the stair against one wall, the living room on the ground floor and the master bedroom up top. The floors barely talked to each other and only the front and back rooms got real daylight.

The plan was reorganised around the stair. We pulled it into the centre of the house and made it the move that brings the building together — a bespoke oak stair that you read from every floor. Living and bedroom were swapped: living goes up, bedroom comes down.

A glass panel set into the ground floor at the front lets daylight reach the lower-ground living room. On the upper floors, sliding doors of translucent rice-paper glass and oak louvres act as Shoji-style screens — they hold privacy without darkening the rooms.

RIBA London Award winner; shortlisted for the RIBA House of the Year final four, 2016.

Materials & makers

What it's made of.

Stair
Bespoke oak, centred in the plan
Screens
Translucent rice-paper sliding doors, oak louvres
Floor (front)
Glass panel with integrated blinds
Doors
Oak-framed bi-folding doors, ground floor
Floor (lower ground)
Polished concrete
Bathrooms
Seamless Corian, walls and floors
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