The Highgate Woods House, Highgate, London

Nestled close to Highgate Woods, this large Edwardian terraced house looks out over a mature garden. The existing ground floor kitchen and living spaces were
disconnected with a poor relationship to the garden.

The owners wanted a set of living, dining and kitchen spaces to the rear of the house that had a positive relationship with one another and the garden. A studio at the bottom of the garden was to provide a private gym.

The design introduced a set of connected spaces facing the garden. Strongly connected but also each space with its own character - space for someone to read overlooking the courtyard - space for someone to prepare dinner and host whilst not impacting the reader in the snug.

To avoid suffocating the existing building, a courtyard is introduced to ensure natural light and ventilation back to the existing rear reception room. The courtyard also provides a break in the plan and snapshot views are captured across the courtyard and through the new spaces.

A spine wall features as a library space for the owners, dividing the kitchen, eating and snug spaces. The existing extension was re-built with its silhouette reflecting the pitch of the original conservatory - this is doubled across the site in the form of a saw tooth roof design.

High level glazing floods the living spaces with natural light, whilst steps in the floor level provide a link back to the main house.

A green roof sits on the roof slopes to elevate the garden aspect up towards the rear first floor rooms. A charred timber studio sits sunken at the bottom of the garden looking back towards the house.

We built the spaces and the in house joinery team designed and fabricated all the bespoke joinery throughout the ground floor spaces.

Fraher & Findlay provided a full architect design and construction service for this project.