23 Kensington Place

Tom Kay designed this house for the photographer Christopher Bailey and his wife, the opera singer Angela Hickey. The brief included provision for a singing practice studio. It replaced a derelict house of c1840, which Kay was initially invited by Christopher Bailey to remodel in 1964. It is a blue brick bastion that bookends a Victorian terrace. A cleverly planned, slender end of terrace that replaced an earlier house. Two interlocking rectilinear volumes with a pronounced cylindrical stair tower that enables a freer plan across four floors. The tallest part of the house faces Kensington Place and the blank slab of its face is separated from the adjoining terrace by a run of vertical glazing that continues uninterrupted to the basement. Internally, precast concrete, brick and quarry tiles made for an honest, if hard, material expression. The main living area is double height and set at first floor, served by a terrace on the roof of the garage and afforded wonderful daylighting by high level sloping glazing that faces north over a small mezzanine study area. The upper most roof area is accessible via the stair tower as well. The building was listed Grade II in 2013.

Tom Kay was born in Haifa, Palestine in 1935 and arrived in the UK, via Montreal, in 1948. He schooled at the Central London Polytechnic and worked in the offices of Erno Goldfinger and the LCC Housing Section before spending time in Tel Aviv, returning to the UK in 1962. Between 1964 and 2006, as Tom Kay Associates, he worked predominantly on housing, but also designed workshops, offices and labs. His shops and studios at Loudon Road, Camden were also listed in 2016. He taught at the RCA, UCL, AA, Oxford Brookes and was visiting critic at Kingston and Columbia.