How architecture can add colour to life's rich tapestry

8 March 2010

While in Spain a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by how characterless the domestic architecture is in that country.

In the UK it’s different. One of the reasons for this is that we have a varied building stock, much of which is capable of being converted.

I saw a good example of this only last week. What appeared at first glance to be an unexciting bungalow turned out to have formerly been the gas works for Chobham, in Surrey. It had been extended to incorporate an adjacent foreman’s cottage.

Converting schools and office buildings is now commonplace. Still in Surrey, what used to be Ash Vale railway station near where I live has been converted into a lovely house. Charmingly, the rear patio of the home is the old platform, complete with waiting room which is now used as a garden shed.

Many similar conversions are dotted around the countryside, as a result of Dr Beeching’s notorious railway cuts of the 1960s.

The UK is not the only country to re-use railway facilities.

In my student days I caught a train from Mexico City to El Paso and decided to take the rural route in a third-class carriage because it was cheaper.

I vividly remember sharing my seat with a cage of chickens for part of the journey. When we stopped in the dead of night we were adjacent to a siding full of dilapidated, disused train coaches, all of which were being lived in by families.

The bedrooms had mirrors on the ceilings and one was decked out as a dungeon - well, a girl has to work

This was poverty the like of which I had never seen - and all in a country which only a decade earlier had been able to host a World Cup.

Returning to the UK, when I first started to value properties in London I had the great pleasure of meeting the leader of a still existing pressure group know as The Collective of English Prostitutes.

The lady in question was outwardly perfectly normal except for where she lived. Her flat was converted from a former porter’s office in the basement of a mansion block on Green Street, Mayfair.

Over the years she had expanded her flat to incorporate a selection of adjacent storage areas, all without pausing to obtain any form of planning consent.

As a result, she now occupied the entire basement floor and was trying, via yours truly, to remortgage the lot.

Back then I was pretty naive but even I twigged when I found the base of the lift shaft in one of her so-called bedrooms.

Altogether, her flat was an intriguing habitat as all the rooms were painted matt black and all the bedrooms had mirrors on the ceilings. One room in particular was decked out as a medieval dungeon. Well, a girl has to work, doesn’t she?

On a not entirely unrelated subject, last week I noticed a media reference to a company offering houses made entirely of glass.

Clearly, these homes’ construction has to fit certain criteria, the most obvious of which is that the property should be on a secluded private plot. A continental attitude to nudity and dangly bits also helps.

Personally, I’m in favour of this as a housing concept. At least it means that there would be no chance of the mother-in-law staying over. Would there?