A Room for One More | Studio Ben Allen

Designed for a flat in London’s Barbican Estate, the brief was to find space for a children’s bedroom within the existing layout of a one bedroom apartment, a workspace to enable working from home as well as to provide additional storage space. The client was keen that the intervention would relate to the architecture of the Barbican and provide a high degree of flexibility to allow the growing family to continue living in their much loved but modest sized flat.

The solution was to convert the existing dining area into a second bedroom by inserting a single visually unified architectural element that served as: wall, door, living room storage unit, drop down desk, home office storage, bed, child’s desk and seating area.  

The Barbican leitmotif of the arch and inverted arch underlies the design and informs the niches for the desk and bed, the upholstered seat and the inlay front to the cabinets in the living room. The stepped circular sunken gardens and seating areas in the Barbican lake are reflected in the forms of the door and cabinet handles.

The design is intended to provide a high degree of flexibility in terms of how it can be used or arranged. The desk folds away when not in use and is supported with a cable and operated with a counterweight to ensure ease of use. The lower steps for the bunk bed retract to provide a small child’s desk. The upholstered seat can be positioned under the bed or elsewhere in the room, freeing up the space under the bed for play and to access the additional storage located there. The bed can easily be demounted and sit on the floor or be removed altogether. Cupboards above and below the desk provide home office or work related storage.

The structure was fully fabricated off-site and was installed in just two days. As the building is Grade II listed, the structure was designed so that only the track and frame for the sliding door are fixed to the existing fabric – all other elements are freestanding, thus the structure can easily be removed, leaving the fabric of the building untouched. Materials are robust and utilitarian; painted birch plywood, through-coloured wood fibreboard and brass. Key features such as the desk, bed and seat are picked out with subdued primary colours. The mirror shelf creates an interplay with the underlying arched and circular geometry of the Barbican and, from the living room seating area, provides a reflected view of the adjacent Barbican façade itself. When the bedroom sliding door is retracted, the two spaces flow together, and the existing hardwood frame window wall is uninterrupted as a visually continuous element.

Credits

Design: Studio Ben Allen

Design team: Ben Allen, Marco Nicastro, Massine Yallaoui

Fabricators: Top Notch Joinery

Client: Joe & Jennifer Reeves

Photographs: French & Tye

Unless otherwise indicated, all materials copyright © Studio Ben Allen. Unless otherwise indicated, all material use must be credited to Studio Ben Allen.