A former East London school block is now a dramatic, light-filled home

This East London property has come a long way since its days as the science lab, canteen and art department of a local school.

Made with volume masterminded the 1935 redbrick building’s award-winning renovation in 2017, wrestling it from a defunct school-building-turned-apartment-block into a light-filled four-bedroom home. The London practice honed in on the building’s key architectural details when reuniting the building, using them as the focal point of the conversion.

This includes an imposing concrete stairwell – designed for moving students from one part of the building to another, with its metal handrails intact – as well as solid pine herringbone parquet, perimeter floor tiles and new period-appropriate Fabco steel windows, designed to replace the lost originals.

A huge hallway with three-metre-high ceilings welcomes visitors on the ground floor. Shared living spaces are on the first floor, which is accessed by a new yellow staircase at one end of the house and the original concrete stairwell at the other.

Entirely open plan, the living room is illuminated by five huge warehouse windows, and a new kitchen has been installed at one end, anchored by an oversized island. Three bedrooms fill the lower level, with the fourth on the upper floor. It’s currently a home office – fitting, given it was once the teacher’s lounge.

Crowning the entire building is a landscaped rooftop wildflower garden with a deck and raised planters to zone the space into a lounge area and dining terrace. Views span the Olympic Park and city skyline out to the Wanstead Flats in the east.

The Modern House is marketing the freehold London property for £1.5m – take a tour in the gallery above.