Alex Michaelis: Home boy
Alex Michaelis is Notting Hill’s most sought after architect and his own house is an unlikely underground success story. Pendle Harte meets him for a tour.
Above: Alex Michaelis
They had told me to pay attention while walking down Oxford Gardens or I’d miss the house. It’s not visible from the street at all: there’s just a fence with a door and a buzzer, none of it at all special or architecty. But that’s all part of the appeal. Architect Alex Michaelis’s famous underground house is, for all its cleverness and innovation, very understated and discreet, inside and out.
This is a house that attracted lots of attention at every stage of its development. First there was the plot, a derelict bit of land in the middle of a Victorian terrace, which entirely on the basis of its desirable postcode cost Michaelis a reputed £750,000. That’s with no building on it obviously – and even then he had to clear it up. “It was full of fridges, mattresses and foxes,” says Alex. Then there was the fairly major bit of legislation restricting any building on the site from reaching more than six feet above ground level. But although some people thought the project was mad, Alex never had any doubts. And in fact, the end result is lighter than he had hoped, much greener than any older houses and very spacious. It’s a wonderful home for Michaelis, his wife and their three (very lucky) children.
Alex Michaelis is well-known as Notting Hill’s coolest architect and Michaelis Boyd, the company he runs with Tim Boyd, is the practice behind the Electric’s rebuild as well as numerous other stylish local outfits including Woody’s, Fresh & Wild, Melt, Mook, Cowshed and lots of domestic properties too (including David Cameron’s). “I’ve lived around here all my life. It’s in the blood,” says Alex, who grew up with an architect father and didn’t really want to become an architect until he found himself doing the seven year course. “Most of our work is residential but I’m interested in everything really,” he says, listing a water tank in Kent as one of his current jobs. The Oxford Gardens house is probably his most unusual undertaking, an initially daunting project that required expensive excavation – “we had to put five metre columns all the way round then excavate out and build a Great Escape tunnel to put our sewage pipe in” – and was restricted by the Royal Borough’s strict planning code. “The nice thing about Kensington and Chelsea is that there are ‘important spaces’ between buildings that the council protects, which isn’t the case in, say, Westminster. I love the fact that they didn’t give permission for a house that went above ground because if they had, it would have had to look like all the other houses. Here the deal was: anything below the garden wall that can’t be seen is up to you, so rather than having a long rectangular house a third of the size, we could have this big square.”
Eco architecture has become a big interest of Alex’s over the past few years. The Oxford Gardens house has a grass roof, which, he explains “cleans the air – if all of London had green roofs it would help solve flood problems as well as create a beautiful view from the air for people flying in.” He generates most of his hot water and some of his electricity through solar panels at the side of the house, near the socket for his electric car, and sources his own water from 100 metres underground, liberating him from water rates and enabling him to have slightly sparkling clean water on tap in his kitchen.
Amazingly, the house has a swimming pool, which, far from an environmental casualty, is hugely beneficial to the house’s heat and energy consumption. Though that wasn’t part of the initial plan so much as a handy by-product. “We wanted to have a pool because we all like swimming. And then we found that if it was part of the house it could work as a heat synch, emanating heat throughout the house. The water is always slightly hotter than the house and though there’s underfloor heating too, much of the pressure is taken off by the pool heating the fabric of the building. A pool as part of the house is something you see a lot in California and Australia and it’s wonderful. When we’re swimming in the evening with the lights on, reflections bounce off the walls throughout the house.”
Inside, the house is a big white box with a central stairwell that incorporates a plastic slide for the children. The (actually a bit below) ground floor is a vast white open plan space, all sliding doors and concealed storage, that functions as kitchen and living space with a hidden office room, children’s cloakroom and bathroom. The built-in kitchen cupboards open to reveal a comforting glimpse of clutter and a big flat television emerges from the empty mantelpiece at the touch of a button. It’s minimalist without being overly precious: children’s sketches are on display, there’s a skateboard in the corner, everything is white but not excessively polished and there’s a lived-in feel that the stylish photography doesn’t convey. “I wanted it to be low maintenance. The floor is easy grey slate tiles that just need occasional sweeping,” says Alex. Downstairs, properly underground, are five bedrooms, bathrooms, the pool and the central hub, a high tec boiler room that powers the entire place. There’s not much furniture since the children’s rooms all have built-in desks and shelves that seem to be part of the building, all white, and although these underground rooms aren’t flooded with daylight, they’re full of clever light tunnels that deliver an impressive amount of light.
Perhaps Alex’s most famous current project is David Cameron’s nearby house, about which he’s predictably reticent, though he will reveal that it has neither slide nor pool. “It’s going to be great. He’s dug out the basement to accommodate all the special equipment he needs for his very disabled child,” explains Alex. And, of course, installed that wind turbine, though at the moment they’re renegotiating its planning permission after it was fixed on the wrong side of the chimney breast and had to come down after just a few days. “It was getting good results though, it had the right vibrations.” The problem with wind turbines, says Alex, is their price. “I just can’t understand the cost of them. They’re incredibly simple and shouldn’t be nearly as expensive as they are. They’ll only ever produce a few percent of a house’s energy so they only make sense if they’re cheaper.”
Notting Hill is a constant hive of building activity and although it’s Alex’s bread and butter, he objects to the wastefulness of it all. “This area’s terrible for people ripping out perfectly good things all the time,” he laments – and he’s on a mission to battle the throwaway culture. Together with builders merchants Nu Line in Westbourne Park Road he’s planning to open a reclamation yard that’s not full of smart architectural pieces but old stones, timberwork, basins, switches and all kinds of reusable objects. “We’re thinking of doing it under the Westway but nothing’s certain yet,” he says. In the meantime, he will carry on creating “good simple architecture, getting the space flow and light right and then personalising it.” That’s his signature, and it’s one that’s heavily in demand.
www.michaelisboyd.com