Carmody Groarke

Covent Garden House . London

Carmody Groarke . photos: © Johan Dehlin

A new duplex penthouse apartment in a nineteenth-century Grade II Listed merchant’s house is given a unique identity with the addition of a new rooftop aluminium pavilion.

The top two floors of the existing building have been extensively renovated and remodelled to accommodate bespoke patterns of family life. On the lower level, the entrance lobby and bedrooms are lined throughout with walnut-panelled joinery to give a warm and welcoming atmosphere. In contrast, the upper floor’s generous open-plan living takes full advantage of the loft space’s high ceilings and panoramic views over Covent Garden Market. Large new skylights have been introduced in between the original roof trusses bringing daylight and fresh air deep into the plan.

To the rear of the landlocked site, the new rooftop pavilion extends the loft space, housing a new kitchen inside and a sheltered roof terrace outside. It takes the familiar form of a pitched roof extension with generous openings and is designed to balance lightly on top of the existing London stock-brick annexe. However, the use of 25mm-thick solid-plate sanded aluminium for walls and roof, abstracts the pavilion’s form from the weighty appearance of traditional construction. Instead, its monolithic plates of sheet metal appear to rest against one another in structural equilibrium, giving the pavilion a unique, elemental presence as a new silhouette on the city skyline.
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