Caruso St John Architect's Stirling Prize entry

This family house stands amongst dense residential buildings in a busy part of West London. The land is shaped like a horse’s head, surrounded by three taller buildings, and can only be reached by a carriageway through the façade of an adjacent Victorian terrace. The paradox of making a new building on a site of almost insuperable difficulty can only be explained by the will of the clients, and their determination to make a new home in this particular part of the city where conventional sites were used up many years ago. In this design, the accidental but wildly spatial shape of the site has been used to form the living spaces. The interior plan is completely separate from the typologies of the London town-house or the inner city loft, while still retaining a strong sense of dwelling at the heart of the city.