Client: Private

Location: London

Status: Complete

Brief

Located in North London this project brief was to re-imagine a stock 1930’s home with a great deal of sentimental value into a dream forever home. The primary goal was to achieve a five bedroom, four bathroom house to accommodate and entertain a large and growing circle of family and friends, particularly during religious occasions.

The solution entailed stripping the original building back to its shell and re-configuring the spatial arrangement with emphasis on efficiency and space to achieve the accommodation brief on the upper floors and create a greater sense of space and flexibility on the lower floors. This was achieved through an innovative use of sliding screens that enable the client to open up and close down spaces, either achieving a greater sense of space, or the inverse, intimacy and privacy. All was supported by a large ground floor and modest first floor extension.

A driving factor for the design of the extension was to increase the usability of the large garden as an extension of the internal entertaining space, further increasing the capacity in summer months and providing natural light and visual amenity. Recessed framed solid oak sliding screens and structural glass corner-less sections create a seamless connection to an external kitchen equipped with BBQ, pizza oven and bar.

The white brick and white flush joint mortar create a subtle complementary response to the existing building fabric. Internally Oak panelling seamlessly meets the white brick and serves a datum to the room picking up the kitchen and dropped ceiling. Black stained cedar shingles clad the first-floor extension and existing dormer which relate in scale, colour and texture to the existing hung tiles visible along the terrace.