Everyone wants to live in a beautiful city, in a beautiful neighborhood, but have you ever wondered how one creates it? To maintain a certain aesthetic, many public authorities impose rules on what architects can or cannot do in terms of dimensions, materials and finishes. This was the brief that was delivered Wadhalthe London studio founded by Fahad Malik when it was commissioned to replace a pair of derelict garages on a plot in Ruislip with a new two-bedroom house.
While these rules often make sense, since you might not want to wake up next to a pink neon villa as a neighbor one day, they also greatly limit creative freedom. In the UK, where many neighborhoods and suburbs are known for their neat houses and repetitive urban planning, the rules are particularly precise. Hillingdon Council’s terms were clear: any new building on the site had to reproduce externally, in form and materials, the austere 1930s houses next door, the typical architecture of inter-war suburban London, all brown brick, shingle and gabled roofs.
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
Wade House by Wadhal © Lorenzo Zandri
The architectural project
The result is Wade Housea building that, from the sidewalk, appears completely conventional and, on closer inspection, is not conventional at all. Wadhal kept the massing, contour and pitch of the roof identical to the neighborhood, but everything else was redesigned in the language of modern art. The base of the house is clad in red brick with an alternating, extruded four-point pattern instead of a flat joint, the roof alternates two shades of fire tile instead of a uniform course, and the pipes are absorbed into the building instead of being bolted externally.
About contexts
Malik has described the approach as treating council restrictions as an opportunity rather than a constraint. By following the rules but sharpening every possible option, the house acts as a camouflaged criticism instead of the usual hyperbole architects use when they want to protest something. The work is part of the wider argument of ‘contextualism’ and as the council’s version treats the context as something to be copied, Wade House accepts this logic and uses it to illicitly transfer to a different argument: that character is not really produced by contours but by the attention given to the details of a building, its intersections, its art.
Densification of London
Wade House sits on a footprint of exactly 70 square metres, the minimum internal area allowed by the London Plan for a two-bedroom, four-person house. It replaces a pair of garages, the kind of small, underused plot that housing researchers and the Greater London Authority have identified as one of the most realistic routes to adding housing to outer London without sacrificing greenery or building towers. This debate has been going on for years, with many institutions arguing for “gentle” or “mild” suburban densification.
However, Britain’s planning system decides these issues on a case-by-case basis, unlike the rule-based zoning systems that exist in other countries, such as France, for example. Each new home is based on the judgment of an individual planning officer and the neighborhood as a whole. Because the rules are fresh every time, Wadhal and Wade House provide an excellent precedent for future renovations, showing how capable it is architect can create within a limited system.
