UPPER HOLLOWAY

INFORMATION

Our clients came to us with a brief to reconfigure their Victorian terrace house to create a large open plan living, kitchen, dining, and entertainment space for their young family as well as provide utility spaces, a cloakroom, and a music and writing studio.

Our response to their brief was to remove the existing network of rooms to the rear of the house and lower the floors to match the garden level. An enormous roof light draws light deep into the kitchen at the centre of the plan which looks out across the dining and living space to the garden. 

The tall kitchen area was created by lowering the suspended floor, transforming the existing small rooms into a single, dramatic space at garden level. An expansive roof light floods the kitchen with natural light, with adjustable track lighting to illuminate the kitchen and artwork. A new acoustically isolated music and writing studio is located on the first floor, occupying the rooftop with views out to the neighbourhood.

The new building is conceived as a pair of stacked brick volumes with infill panels of brick or glass, with the darker window openings designed to contrast with the pale brickwork. The bricks were carefully selected to have a similar texture and pattern to the existing London Stock brick facades. We specified a lime mortar mixed with coarse sand to match the brickwork texture. The mortar pointing is then rubbed flush to the face of the brick, blurring the joint lines to create the illusion of larger panels of brickwork.

The result is a contemporary building which connects to the existing house to form a large garden room which becomes the centre of the house, full of natural light.