High life.

The sensitive conversion of a Victorian factory in east London into residential shells has provided the opportunity for elegant architectural essay.

Buschow Henley's conversion of an old industrial warehouse in Shoreditch, east London, into a series of empty loft shells, has brought about a remarkable concentration of architectural essays. In spite of the place's remoteness from any semblance of village life (a local paper shop, grocery store and the rest), the architects' intelligent conversion seems to have attracted a breed of city-dwellers that has only recently appeared in Britain -- affluent, largely youthful and interested in architecture and in living in apartments. Very well informed about design, they have, one by one, bought these shells and created individual Modernist eyries, either on their own or with the help of architects. In Britain, such a community is probably unique.

The building, now known as The Factory, is thought to have been used at various times for garment making, by the fur trade and for museum storage. Lining one side of a narrow canyon-like street, it is a massive Victorian structure, built around a central courtyard and subdivided into units, the extents of which accord with existing party walls. Additions by the architects take the form of skeletal structures supporting a lift tower, wooden decks around the upper floors, balconies and rooftop extensions. In playful counterpoint to the urban street, the practice has recreated the ideal of the garden suburb on the roof, with a succession of zinc-clad glazed pavilions and terraced gardens surrounded by fences. In consequence, units on the top floors, illuminated by pavilions and with wide views over the city, are the most desirable; and Buschow Henley's commission to organize the interior of one on the east side provided the opportunity to work within its own parameters. The architects volumetric manipulation of the simple shell transforms it into a luminous dwelling composed of vertical and horizontal layers so that spaces flowing one into the other are thereby enlarged.

Though pavilions are used elsewhere to provide a garden room, their main function is to bring light into the centre of the deep plan. Here, though the structure contains a gallery, it is emphatically a central skylight introducing a strong vertical element and dividing the apartment into public and personal space. At the back are bedrooms; at the front, a living room, with intermediate space devoted to kitchen and dining.

Working with the vertical order, the second horizontal one imposes two peripheral blocks underneath the big skylight. This leaves a central corridor so that you can see clear from the front to the back wall of the apartment. Running down the south side are the kitchen, and behind a small study and guest bedroom. On the north, the block contains a wooden staircase to the gallery and terrace, and bath- and shower-rooms. Capped with glass and conceived as light boxes within the bigger light box, they are full of a diffused luminance which reflected off pale concrete lends it the beauty of stone.

Such manipulation of light appears elsewhere. The gallery, which is the transition between interior and exterior, is set below the level of the roof terrace so that light filtering between it and existing beams gives the structure a floating quality. Glass risers set into the stairs form translucent slots into