A Sculptural Ceiling Brings Oscar-Worthy Levels of Drama to This Reworked London Flat

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Project Details:

Location: London, United Kingdom

Architect: MATA Architects / @mata_architects

Footprint: 1,561 square feet

Builder: KM Construction

Structural Engineer: Float Structures

Photographer: Felix Speller / @felixspeller

From the Architect: "Vaulting loft occupies the second floor of a detached Victorian-era house in Hampstead, London. Our clients are a family who are based abroad but spend a lot of time visiting London for a few days to a few weeks at a time. This flat is their London base. The scheme infills a valley that existed between two parallel roof ridges, creating an expansive new flat roof and a grand floor-to-ceiling height below. The extension allowed us to reconfigure what was previously a two-bedroom top-floor flat into three bedrooms. The epic height created an opportunity to insert a mezzanine floor.

"In September 2023, we started on-site by fully demolishing the existing roof, making way for an entirely new roof which allowed us to expose and express the roof structure. It also enabled us to maximize floor-to-ceiling height whilst making substantial improvement to the roof’s thermal performance, which will have a hugely positive effect on future energy consumption and bills. Moving through the flat, the new dynamic roof form moves with you, at times soaring high creating a grand and expansive sense of space, whilst at others it drops down low, creating moments of more human scale and intimacy.

"The volume below the mezzanine is conceived as a solid timber block out of which space is ‘carved’ for circulation to the three bedrooms, storage, and a guest bathroom. This sculptural block is articulated in warm aak, inside and out, contrasting with the wider, white space from which it emerges."