As early as 2001, Webster had had a London furniture factory converted by David Adjaye into a home-cum-atelier, nicknamed “Dirt House”. Later, she sought to renew her vision of living and working under a single roof in the Mole Man’s house.
The true size of the building is scarcely recognizable from the street. Its free-standing, cubic form is lower than the surrounding terraced housing, because the attic storey was destroyed by a fire during the long years the structure had stood empty. With its abrupt, flat rooftop the house is a rarity in the neighbourhood. The facade articulation of the two uppermost storeys, on the other hand, is as symmetric as it ever was. Even the oriels, so typical of terraced housing in London, have been recreated by the architects with modern sectional systems. Above this, a broadly cantilevered, concrete cornice draws a horizontal line. On some facades, one can still see the cracked rendering with its coarse rectangular forms. It was simply consolidated to prevent further spalling. On the south face, in contrast, which is almost without fenestration, there is exposed brickwork. In repairing the pitted external walls, almost 15,000 bricks were relaid, reclaimed partly from the same site and partly from demolished buildings. Internally, new concrete walls in a cruciform layout bear the loads of the new floor slabs and stabilize the house, which was completely gutted.
The greatest change occurred at lower ground floor level. To the west and south, the architects extended the volume of the building into the garden. Exposed concrete walls reveal which sections of the fabric are old and which are new. In the garden on the northern face, the Mole Man had earlier created a concrete terrace. The architects had the ground below this excavated, removing tonnes of lightweight concrete and rubble to allow direct access to the house at lower ground floor level.
The range of materials used internally, including exposed concrete, white plasterboard and laminated Douglas fir sheeting, would scarcely suggest that this was a refurbished structure. Only the floorboarding in the living rooms consists of used material from other buildings. Over the uppermost flight of stairs, a large, motor-operated, sliding rooflight allows daylight to enter the artist’s studio. At a later date, it would be conceivable to remove this window and take the staircase up further, thereby restoring the original cubic form of the house. The load-bearing structure is certainly strong enough to bear another storey.
