An east London apartment has been turned into a family home by reconfiguring its compartmentalised floor plan
When Belgian architect Ewald Van Der Straeten discovered a flat for sale in east London’s Trevelyan House in 2012, he jumped at the chance to view it, and then put in an offer the very next day. “My big dream would have been to live in a Barbican apartment. I love the robust beauty of the concrete and the well-proportioned interiors,” he says. “It was pure luck that I found a flat in this building; it has many of the qualities I was seeking, which you just don’t find in the majority of new builds.”
Trevelyan House was built in 1958 by Sir Denys Lasdun, the British architect behind the National Theatre’s boldly Brutalist design. Lasdun devised the then radical idea of a butterfly plan, which saw the rear unit on each floor of this block of flats set at right angles to the other two, with a central core containing the stairs and lift. Not only did this improve the aspect of each apartment, it also negated the need for long access corridors and gave residents more privacy while maintaining a neighbourly atmosphere. Its “cluster block” design allowed for 24 new residences to be created on a relatively small Second World War bomb site in Bethnal Green, without disturbing the existing character of the street.
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