Garden Studio and Banya, Hampstead
13 March 2023
An unusual and inventive project housing the traditional elements of a Russian ‘Banya’ - including sauna, bucket shower, and plunge pool – as well as a garden studio, set within a woodland location in Hampstead. A collaboration with interior designers Black and Milk.
Set among mature trees, whose locations inform its angled geometry, the building is broken up into two volumes externally. This subtle fragmentation articulates the key components of the scheme – a flexible garden room, storage space and sauna.
Creating a building that feels embedded in the woodland was central to Cooke Fawcett’s proposals. The garden room has large, glazed sliding doors that draw the garden into the interior. A large bespoke wrap-over rooflight/window to the rear provides a dramatic framed view of the extensive woodlands behind.
A special system of structural mini-piles was developed to minimise the project’s impact on surrounding tree roots. Specific offsets to tree trunks were carefully planned to ensure they have clear space to grow.
Discretely located at the north end of the garden of Kebony House - itself a recent timber-clad addition to a 19th Century villa – the building’s design continues the kebony wood cladding and is sensitively integrated into its mature garden setting.
Responding to the tree locations and the sloping site has generated a specific pair of structures that feel fresh and unexpected, and very much ‘of the site’. The roof profile follows the sloping landscape, and the resultant forms, together with the choice of timber as both an exterior and interior material, reinforce the idea of an escape to nature.
Located within Hampstead Conservation Area, planning consent was a notable achievement, involving detailed coordination with ecology and tree experts. Completed in 2021, the new structures have created approximately 40m² of new usable space.
Project team:
Architects – Cooke Fawcett
Interior Design and Project Management – Black and Milk
Structural Engineering – Philip Cooper of Cambridge Architectural Research
Environmental Engineering – Max Fordham
Arboricultural – Wassells Arboricultural Services
Released By
Wassells Aboricultural Services
