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“Rick Mather's unrivalled skill with structural glass and the flow of natural light characterises this truly unique residence, which is crowned with a roof garden of rare beauty”
This magnificent five-bedroom Victorian townhouse represents a rare foray into residential architecture by the renowned Anglo-American architect Rick Mather. Famed for his work on university buildings, galleries and museums, Mather built an illustrious reputation during the latter decades of the 20th century as a modernist practitioner of exquisite skill and subtlety. This house on Primrose Gardens in Belsize Park was home to Mather’s practice for many years, with the top floors used as his private residence. The home has an expansive, beautifully planted garden and is crowned by a superb roof terrace that enjoys sweeping views of the city skyline.
Primrose Gardens
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History
Rick Mather was born in Oregon in 1937. After receiving his degree in architecture in 1961, he toured Europe taking in the major continental work of Le Corbusier, before landing in the UK in 1963. Mather quickly found his way to the Architectural Association where he became a leading figure in the 1970s, further fostering his passion for architectural modernism. Following a six year stretch with the London Borough of Southwark architectural department, he struck out in private practice in 1973.
It was with Rick Mather Architects that he began to establish an illustrious reputation through award-winning and critically acclaimed work on museums, galleries and universities. Perhaps his finest achievement was his Sterling Prize nominated expansion and redesign of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. Described by the RIBA jury as, “a rich spatial journey” Mather’s intervention introduced a new entrance, education centre and conservation studios, alongside a rooftop terrace. It was widely heralded as a triumph, cleverly utilising lightwells and structural glass to reimagine Britain’s oldest museum.
The Ashmolean project drew on Mather’s earlier experience at the Wallace Collection in 2000, where he carried out a similarly sensitive modernisation of the gallery in his signature style, placing a glazed roof over the courtyard garden to create an elegant restaurant and sculpture court.
His other award-winning work included the £20 million extension to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, which won a Civic Trust Award after its completion in 1999, the same year he completed an extension to Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London and was appointed to masterplan the city's Southbank development. This work cemented Mather’s reputation as one of Britain’s finest Modern architects. A scheme for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts won R.M.A. a RIBA International Award in 2011.
Mather’s alma mater, the College of Design at the University of Oregon, awarded him their highest honour, the Ellis F. Lawrence Medal, remarking, “Mather showed that artistry and responsibility are not mutually exclusive qualities. In his hands, they became complementary.” The Guardian has epitomised his approach to design thus, “…the sensitivity that he brought to his civilising work as an architect was also evident in his friendships, his cultural interests, his own houses and gardens and his infinite and generous hospitality.”
Ultimately, Rick Mather was a master of structural glass and natural light, features which can be seen for the first time in his private residence at Primrose Gardens, where he lived for many years with his partner David Scrase, former deputy director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
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