Diamond House
location : Battersea, London, UK
year complete : 2011
usage : Private House
footprint : 88m2
structure : timber, steel
architect : London Atelier
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The name of this house comes from its skewed plan layout. It occupies four levels including a basement, which still contains some traditional ovens left from Victorian times. The client wished to both extend the house rearwards at the ground floor, as well as link the spaces vertically by introducing an atrium between the basement and ground levels.
Floor structures serve not only to carry loads vertically, but also to stiffen a building against lateral movement by tying the external walls together. As the floor area is reduced, or removed to form vertical openings, this so-called diaphragm action is lost, thus reducing the stability of the external walls and in turn the whole building. In this example we needed to introduce additional steel and timber members into the ground floor to compensate for this reduction in diaphragm action.
Although the upper floors retain some of the feel found in a typical terraced house, the openings in the lower levels have given the building much more vertical interest, while also allowing light to penetrated better into the basement space.
