Jaimie Shorten, partner of Barker Shorten Architects, first visited the owner of a penthouse apartment to discuss a modest proposal to create a small balcony to the rear of the property. Shorten went away having convinced him to do a considerably more ambitious scheme.

The escalation in ambition must have been aided by the building’s location, just south of Limehouse Basin in east London and right on the Thames’s north bank, with a stunning river view from the building’s rear. The apartment occupies the top two storeys of a four-storey building. Constructed in 1959, it still had its original steel-framed Crittall windows on the second floor, but the space on this floor was “very frontal” says Shorten, and didn’t make the most of its majestic view at the back. Shorten suggested the removal of these windows and brick piers, and the insertion of a massive, bespoke, motorised sliding door, 4.2m wide x 2.7m tall, which Shorten believes could be the biggest insulated sliding door for a domestic property in the UK.

The £333,000 project took about six months to complete — and in that time the team had to obtain a licence from the Port of London Authority in order to erect the scaffolding on the river beach, as well as check the tide timetable to ascertain the best time to assemble the scaffolding.

The work has transformed the space. “To change this frontal and enclosed feeling into a more open one that engages the viewer and allows more enjoyment from that sublime experience of being on the river has been achieved with this project,” says Shorten.