belgravia Townhouse
Belgravia, London
A Grade II listed townhouse on the Grosvenor Estate, taken on mid-construction. The previous design team had stepped away; the contractor was on site, digging the basement; an interior designer was developing a vision for the finished house. The studio was brought in to lead the architecture and to deliver, at speed, a complete package of technical information against a build that was already underway.
The work spanned the full house: a new basement under the original footprint, accommodating a swimming pool, cinema, and wine room; the careful restoration of the principal rooms to their original plan form; and the development of every detail at a level rare in a development-led project — stonework, marquetry, panelling, joinery, all designed to line up with the services, the structure, and the heritage requirements of a listed building on a regulated estate. The result is a house that reads as a sensitive restoration despite being almost entirely new behind the façade, and a contemporary home that holds the quiet of the terrace it sits within.
Studio Insight
The hardest projects are the ones already moving.
Coming in mid-build means the studio is working backward from a programme it didn't write, in a building it didn't survey, against a permission someone else negotiated — and forward to a finished house that has to read as if it were always conceived this way. The temptation is to take the existing scheme at face value and accelerate. The discipline is to do the opposite: to question every detail that doesn't yet work, to amend the consents where they need amending, and to slow down on the decisions that will hold the project together, even when the contractor is waiting for information.
A house like this only succeeds if the finished work feels inevitable — as though the heritage building, the contemporary detailing, and the level of finish all belong together because they were designed to. Achieving that under normal circumstances is hard. Achieving it from a standing start, with a build already underway, is what this project was about.
