She famously concocted New Rules for dealing with former lovers, now pop star Dua Lipa looks set to give her Hampstead home a similarly radical overhaul.
The multiple Grammy Award winning singer — and star of the forthcoming Barbie movie — has secured planning consent for a basement extension and to replace the rear extension on the detached house, which sits on one of the area’s most prized leafy avenues.
Having attended both primary and secondary school near Hampstead Heath, the local girl turned global superstar paid £6.75 million for the Victorian property at the start of 2020.
She posted a series of pictures on Instagram apparently from inside the home during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.
These showed the English-Albanian singer, who collaborated with Elton John on Number One single Cold Heart, blowing bubbles in a heavily marbled and mirrored bathroom as well as leaning on a worktop in a contemporary and well-stocked kitchen.
Elsewhere she can be seen fooling around with her boyfriend of the time, Anwar Hadid, on a sofa obscured by a brightly-patterned cover in front of a huge sliding glass door to the garden.
Perhaps exhausting the potential for fun in the house’s current guise during the long lockdowns, Dua Lipa submitted plans in the summer of 2021 for a total overhaul of the Arts and Crafts house.
These were drawn up by architect 4M Group, who created the first Kosovo Pavillion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012.
The proposed changes include a basement dig to provide a subterranean swimming pool hidden beneath the back garden, steam room, shower and changing room as well as a cinema and studio.
There will also be studio workspaces in the basement “to allow work activity to be separate from the rest of the house”.
The plans also included knocking down an existing rear extension and replacing it with a new family room. The design includes clay tiles on the outside walls and a green roof.
The revamped home will include three bedrooms over two upper floors and a series of living spaces at ground level.
There will also be a library and drawing room on either side of an entrance hall.
This then leads to a large open-plan space functioning as kitchen, garden room, and dining area.
Despite an objection from the Redington Frognal Neighbourhood Forum, which expressed concerned about the impact on a local conservation area, Camden Council gave the project the green light earlier this year.
Basement excavations have been controversial in Camden, where many homeowners in the borough’s more expensive neighbourhoods — such as Hampstead — have added space to their pretty period homes by going underground.
In 2017 several of Camden’s neighbourhood forums sought to strengthen planning law around basement development after neighbours of such excavations suffered subsidence, flooding and construction nuisance in their own homes.
Homeowners must now submit detailed Basement Impact Assessments with planning applications, rather than being allowed to dig down via permitted development.
The consent on Lipa’s house is subject to certain further conditions, incuding strict construction restrictions “to ensure that the amenity of occupiers of the development site/surrounding premises is not adversely affected by noise from mechanical installations/equipment”.
Presuming this can be sorted by the builders, it seems the Barbie star could soon be able to Dance the Night in a bigger house than ever.
