I first read about Shadow House in The Sunday Times a week or so ago, and was intrigued by both the architecture and the story behind it. The building was designed and built by relatively new architecture practice Liddicoat & Goldhill, consisting of husband and wife team David Liddicoat and Sophie Goldhill. The couple created Shadow House as their own home to both satisfy their fascination with the private house, but also to fulfil a frustration with the vicissitudes of the London domestic marketplace; “We knew that we could only realise the project if the house was very small, very simple and on an affordable piece of land – an anathema in London. We set out to find most awkward site possible, and to build a house there with our own hands”. The name of the house refers to the way its form plays with light and shade, replacing a former electricity substation at the end of a Victorian terrace in the Camden Square Conservation Area, just north of Kings Cross. The project is both inspiring for its materiality and design as well as being kept within budget, at a mere £210,000 for 77 sqm. Shadow House is built from robust, primary materials such as the glazed black slim-format Dutch Engineering brick, laminated larch and polished white concrete. The interior of the house creates various conditions throughout the day: with limited light and space available, the design has to revolve around an intimate collage of shadow, texture, mass and reflectance.
Images: Wallpaper Magazine
