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Studio House
Coate Street, London E2
£695,000 Freehold 
Introduction
Accommodation and images
History
Download floorplan (pdf)
Although the house was completed in 2004, the design process began in 2000. This was the year in which the current owners chose Sergison Bates, after talking to a number of architects, to take on the project of building a house on derelict land in East London.
At the time Sergison Bates (formed by Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates) was a relatively young practice, but they had already begun to build their reputation for responding with sensitivity and imagination to challenging assignments.
The clients were willing to explore the possibilities the blank canvas of the site presented, and offered the architects an unusual degree of freedom over both architectural form and internal detailing. The result is an intricate but unfussy building that unfolds behind a deceptively simple external façade. One of the key inspirations for the house was Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (www.kettlesyard.co.uk), a building that is both house and art gallery, with minimal distinction of the function of each individual space. The architectural historian Adrian Forty published an essay about the work of Sergison Bates entitled ‘The Comfort of Strangeness’, and wrote of the house having “no hierarchy between the different rooms, just a series of spaces to lounge in, read in, eat in, or simply be in”.
Forty went on to discuss the detailing of the house: “The most obviously ‘luxurious’ features are the windows, purpose made from Douglas fir and with high-performance seals and closing mechanisms.” The windows provide one of the primary aesthetic features of the house too. “The way the windows are treated here makes them into an important element of the architecture, not merely a convenience for letting in light and air.” Forty concluded that “Sergison Bates’s work does provide the layers of protection that people need in order to feel at home, but the comfort it creates does not anaesthetise.” What marks out the architecture of the Studio House is an unconventional use of simple, ‘plain’ materials, offering a surprising complexity and richness that is relaxed yet uncompromisingly contemporary.
Established in 1996, Sergison Bates have been the recipients of numerous awards and have worked on a broad range of projects across the globe. Their most recent prizes include the 2006 Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal for Architecture and the Erich Schelling Medal for Architecture. Their projects include houses, schools, offices and urban masterplans in locations including London, Dublin, Puglia, Malmo, Geneva and Antwerp. Despite the broad range of their work, the Studio House in East London is frequently cited as their most notable achievement.
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