Westbourne House, London

This development of 22 apartments in west London replaces a 1980s office building faced with brick. We stripped back the elevations, retaining their cranked form, but were able to keep the original frame, extending it up by a floor and adding a projecting bay to the front. Newly clad with Petersen’s Columba bricks, the building has a similar horizontality to the art deco-style Queens Apartments, just one block away, but the ribbon windows are subdivided by faience panels in peacock blue to give a more domestic feel. They are detailed with an abstraction of the Gaelic weave pattern used in the decorative metalwork to the balconies.