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This wonderful three-bedroom house with off-street parking has an excellent location in the heart of Camden, overlooking the Grand Union Canal. It forms part of a small row of highly imaginative townhouses built in 1988 to a design by the renowned architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw.The house measures approximately 1,250 sq ft over three floors. The focal point of the interior is a stunning double-height dining area with a glazed up-and-over door, which leads to a balcony overhanging the water. This is open-plan to a smart kitchen with modern fitted units, and adjacent to the reception room, which also overlooks the canal.The remaining accommodation comprises a master bedroom with curved fitted wardrobe, second bedroom with en-suite bathroom, third mezzanine bedroom overlooking the dining room, utility room, store room and shower room. On top of the building is a roof terrace with panoramic views. The house comes with an off-street parking space.Grand Union Walk is close to an excellent selection of shops, markets, bars and restaurants in Camden and Kentish Town, with the more extensive facilities of the West End also within easy reach. Local transport links include Camden Town Underground Station (Northern Line) and Camden Road Overground Station. Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park, with their large areas of green space, are a short walk away.Sir Nicholas Grimshaw is one of Britain’s most prominent contemporary architects, responsible for the design of buildings including the Eden Project in Cornwall, the grandstand at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, and the Thermae Bath Spa in Bath.
Grand Union Walk
SOLD
History
Grand Union Walk comprises ten three-bedroom houses, a one-bedroom maisonette and a bedsit, built in 1988 to a design by Grimshaw Architects.The properties form part of a larger redevelopment project that includes a Sainsbury’s supermarket, a pre-school, 300 parking spaces and 2,000 sq m of office/workshop space.The supermarket is the dominant building on the site, and is an example of the innovative Hi-Tech steel structure typical of Grimshaw’s work. The houses were included as a gesture to begin to develop housing along the canal, and continue the industrial language. The design of the properties is a response to their site, with a blank corrugated metal wall to the parking and service area on one side, and open living spaces on the other that cantilever over the canal. The main access is from a low-level private canal-side path. The form was dictated by the lack of south-facing windows and the need to allow sunlight to penetrate the living areas – hence the L-shaped, open-plan, top-lit living space on the first floor. The properties are built from dense concrete blockwork with precast concrete floors and felt-covered timber roofs. Internally, the walls are plastered and painted, and natural beech is used for stairs, flooring and other details.The section is organised in typical row house fashion, with an entry, bedroom and bath on the lowest level, a stair leading to the living spaces on the main floor, with a two-storey void and stair connecting to the third level where there are two bedrooms and a bathroom. The two-storey-high void of the dining room is expressed on the canal façade as a canted glazed wall running the full height of the top two floors. The lower section of this window is a vertically sliding door that tracks up so that the whole dining area can be opened to the terrace overlooking the water. The recessed, canted glass walls of the dining area alternate with the convex corrugated metal walls of the living/bedroom, resulting in a solid / void pattern on the canal façade. Skylights at the top of the dining volume are angled to the south so that some direct sunlight comes into this space and is indirectly shared by the upper bedrooms. Skylights in the ceilings of the upper bedroom and bathroom provide further natural light to these spaces.
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