COSTA’S BARBERS

Purchased in 2015 and occupied by a marketing agency until 2020, this High Street shop in Battersea is currently undergoing conversion into an unusual space designed for living, working and trading. Brisco Loran are acting as designer, builder and ultimate occupier in a collaborative process in which the design evolves in response to an intimate understanding of a specific street, skills and insights gained through physical involvement and a long slow conversation between everybody involved.

Whilst changes to Permitted Development legislation meant that change of use to residential was allowable, our conversion explores the strengthening of the space’s relationship to the street and commercial location. Rather than closing the space off the from the life of the street and its weekly market, a new timber shopfront adds two large openable windows which might operate as ‘kiosks’ on market day but with an additional obscured sash, featuring glass by Pavilion Pavilion, which can be lowered when privacy is required.

In plan, the ‘line’ between public and private, domestic and commercial, is similarly adjustable. The main ‘retail’ space, is designed to be worked in during the day and lived in at night, or might be opened to the public on market day.