Highgate highlight - Ove Arup's house in London, England

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 1995 by Penny McGuire

Ove Arup's house, on which he collaborated with Lorenz and which was sold after his death, has been extended and renovated for its new owners by Eva Jiricna Architects. The site was originally part of the garden of a large house in the same winding Highgate lane, with 'south-westerly views over Parliament Hill Fields and Hampstead Heath; [it] slopes in this direction and the principal rooms overlook the view'. In 1995, the lane still seems countrified, with mud on the road and dense hedges screening houses on either side. The views from the house have matured and in July are of layer upon hazy rounded layer of trees which, receding into the distance, could be a summer landscape in Sussex.

In its celebration of nature and the family hearth, the house is a perfect encapsulation of Scandinavian values in late-1950s Modernism. Set today behind a daunting metal palisade, it turns an impenetrable back to the public lane and opens up to the garden planted with Arup's botanical collection. Big windows were made to frame leafy views, the upper level set back from a terrace, and inside there were open spaces, lots of wood and platform seating around the fireplace. The house was advanced for the time and still seems ingenious. It was well insulated when built and carefully detailed to avoid heat loss. Arup devised underfloor heating on the upper level that could diffuse heat down from the ceiling below.

It is interesting from the minimalist/dematerialist perspective of the mid-1990s to see how firmly anchored Arup's house seems under its soaring roof; and how closely connected it is to domestic architectural traditions. Externally, the elements of its composition - roof, walls, base, windows - are emphatically drawn. Windows may be large, but they are solidly framed; and while airy spaces flow out in Modernist manner from the interior into the green and bosky exterior, areas for sleeping, washing, eating, sitting and so on are firmly identified and located around a central corridor. This was intended to be a big comfortable family house and the idea of flexibility was no doubt simply irrelevant.

It is appropriate that Eva Jiricna's practice should have been chosen to adapt Arup's house. Jiricna's architecture, in which elegant celebration of f unction plays a central part, has a strong engineering bias, and in spite of virtuoso performances in glass and steel (such as the series of filigreed staircases for which it has become famous), the practice has consistently demonstrated sober attention to function. See, for example, the Joan & David shop (AR April 1995 pp73-75). In confronting the challenge posed by the requirements of the house's new occupants, the architects have subdued virtuoso inclinations out of respect for the sobriety of the original and its historic place in the Modernist canon.

When acquired by its new owners in 1991, the house required attention. While generally sound, the exterior needed repair; internally, the original timber fittings were in a poor state and kitchens and bathrooms needed to be modernised. The aim was to retain the essential tectonic qualities of the building and its setting, while modernising and extending it.

The client, who seems to have a Scandinavian addiction to exercise, wanted a gym, with a sauna and changing room, and a 25m lap pool with whirlpool bath and external terrace. He also asked for a conservatory. All these are contained within a new glass extension attached to the southerly side of the house, wrapped round the end of the pool. Running parallel to the house, this long stretch of water is a formal element in the composition, separating the lawn from the wilder part of the garden. The new glass addition, symbiotic to the house, is reticent, with an elemental presence hovering above the water and barely impinging on the host. Structurally, it is composed of a series of linked, skim-pin jointed columns supporting a diaphragm roof that is tied down at the front and back by stainless steel rods fixed to a solid stone wall at the back. This closes the views f rom the garden and provides privacy from the road. Double-glazed structural glass walls enclose the space. Within it, the architects have deployed a series of glazed screens, the opacity of which depends on the degree of privacy required.

New and existing are unified by a floor of grey Spanish limestone that extends from the ground floor of the house into the conservatory and gym and out across the external terrace.

Space inside the house has not been fundamentally changed, though fittings have been. New doors are clad either in stainless steel or glazed, combining with white painted walls and ceilings to create a numinous interior. The kitchen has been refitted with modern appliances and clad in stainless steel and glass; there is new joinery in black lacquered wood and opalised glass. Upstairs, the main bedroom has been opened up to include a new bathroom and dressing room. The bed faces on to the balcony, which with new glass balustrades gives flying views to the garden. It is enclosed by a columned structure that makes reference to tradition, summing up the tension between permanence and the fleeting moment that is present throughout this scheme.