Looking for a London home that breaks the mould? Go beyond the capital’s classic Victorian terraces and you’ll find treasures aplenty, from converted gasholders and television centres, to contemporary structures built from steel and wood.
We’ve unearthed 10 of the most unusual London homes for sale right now.
A Queen’s Park home inspired by a Turner painting
1-2 bedrooms
£1.25m, via The Modern House
JMW Turner’s ‘Interior of an Italian Church’ was the muse for this Queen’s Park home, designed by Takero Shimazaki Architects. This can be read in the dwelling’s arches, vaulted living spaces and soft lighting. Arranged around a pebbled courtyard with Japanese Acer tree and an outdoor shower, the London house is clad in silvering chestnut wood. Have a look around.
Gallery apartment in Victoria
2-3 bedrooms
£7.45m, via Savills
Need a space to house your art collection? The double-height living room inside this apartment on Howick Place could be the place. Its extends 5m-high and 17.6m-wide, and comes with rotating walls that allow the space to be reconfigured. The lateral London property is located inside an old Victorian postal sorting office, converted by designer Alessandro Cajrati Crivelli in 2009.
Penthouse near the river in Barnes
5 bedrooms
£1.65m, via Urban Spaces
This penthouse’s chief draw is its open-plan kitchen and living room, with a double-height ceiling and large windows that flood it with light. Patio doors lead onto a large roof terrace overlooking Barnes and Harrods Village. The apartment – just a short hop from the river and Barnes wetland centre – is capped by a loft bedroom spanning the width of the building. It comes with pedigree too: former owners include a well-known author and an Olympic Gold Medallist.
A steel home wrapped around a Kennington railway bridge
2 bedroom
£1.085m, via The Modern House
This unusual London home is tucked beneath a 19th-century railway bridge in Kennington and billows up beside it. Designed by Undercurrent Architects, its voluminous, curving living spaces are wrapped in Corten steel. At its heart is a soaring, light-filled atrium. Take a tour.
Arts and Crafts live/work space in Notting Hill
7 bedrooms
£8.95m viaDomus Nova
This barrel-vaulted Arts and Crafts dwelling by architect Edward Robert Robson in Westbourne Grove started life as a seminary for nearby St Paul’s Presbyterian Church. During the 20th century it was converted into a Rudolf Steiner and later an Islamic school, and today the unusual London home – for sale via Domus Nova– is an artist’s live/work space. Architect Tchaik Chassay oversaw its adaptive reuse in the 1990s, maintaining its double-height volumes and original parquet flooring.
Apartment inside Television Centre in White City
2 bedrooms
£1.1m, via Christie’s International Real Estate
London’s legendary BBC Television Centre has been reborn. Architecture firm Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has reimagined it as apartments, restaurants and a new outpost for Soho House private members’ club. Homes inside its sweeping Grade II-listed ‘Helios’ take design cues from the building’s mid-century roots: Crittal windows have been restored, and terrazzo surfaces reintroduced. This 938 sq ft apartment sits on the fourth floor and has access to a gym, Soho House and a cinema.
Modern homes by Peter Salter in Holland Park
4 interlocking buildings
£22m (direct enquiries)
British architect Peter Salter has taken things to extremes with this series of four unusual London homes, which offer a radical take on close living. The interlocking modern properties – for sale as one offering – wrap around a timber-lined internal courtyard and come with yurt-like living rooms. Seven years in the making, Walmer Yard scooped the 2017 RIBA London Award and is Salter’s first executed project in the UK.
Penthouse atop the Isokon building in Belsize Park
1 bedroom
£950,000, via The Modern House
The crowning glory of Wells Coates’ iconic Isokon building – once home to Bauhaus designers and German spies – is up for sale. Lined with a birch veneer, the penthouse is compact but perfectly preserved and comes with a large south-facing roof terrace. It was originally the apartment of Isokon furniture company co-founders Jack and Molly Pritchard, who commissioned the building in the 1930s, and more recently, Skandium store founder Magnus Englund. Take a closer look.
Kensington apartment by William Morris
1 bedroom
£3.45m via Domus Nova
Local lore attributes the elaborate stained glass windows and soaring barrelled ceiling in the living room of this Arts & Crafts abode to William Morris. The one-bedroom Queen’s Gate apartment was owned by the Viscountess Petersham, and later crime-writer Lynda La Plante – it also makes a cameo in Paul McCartney’s 1984 film, Give my regards to Broad Street.
Gasholder apartments in King’s Cross
From studio apartments to penthouse duplexes
£810,000 – £3,525,000 via Knight Frank
Unusual is an understatement for this residential development in King’s Cross, which fills the cast iron frames of three conjoined gasholders dubbed the Siamese Triplets. Architecture firm Wilkinson Eyre designed the cylindrical insertions, while Jonathan Tuckey has conceived the interiors for the 145 apartments housed within them – expected to be completed this autumn. ‘There’s so much dynamism to the architecture,’ says Tuckey. ‘We wanted to celebrate the gasholders’ history and geometry while giving owners a sense of softness and domesticity.’
Gasholder dwellers will have access to a gym, spa and cinema, as well as the communal rooftop garden atop one of the buildings, planted by Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist Dan Pearson.
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