Netherhall House London NW3

Place: London
Date: 1990
Design/direction: In collaboration with the studies of Jaime Castañón y Castañón-Rickman

The university-based residency system in the UK is traditionally linked with remarkable common sense to the same campuses where the faculties and schools are located. However, the generalization of university education and the logical increase in the number of students has been generating alternative formulas such as university residences located in the same city.

In this case it was Netherhall House, a residence that opened its doors in 1952 and since then has not stopped growing in number of students and facilities.

The first Netherhall occupied a small, traditional-style house in a residential area of ​​London, and successive extensions had repeated the same scheme, preserving the scale of the surrounding tissue, but accumulating some deficiencies in the common facilities that could hardly accompany that growth.

The demolition of the few houses that completed the block and did not belong to the residence gave the opportunity to build a significant expansion of rooms, order the general services and propose sports areas and outdoor expansion for what was used the covers of the new provisions that were thus half-buried.

The formal contrast between the preexisting and our project was justified by the inconsistency of still making a mimetic architecture in appearance and yet the success in the scale and its functioning as a background of the old architectures have formed a recognized and valued model of integration of the old and the new.