Located on a quiet residential street on the southern edge of Hampstead Heath, this project reinstates an Edwardian terrace as a single-family home. After being subdivided into two individual apartments in the 1970s and followed by years of neglect, the house is in desperate need of repair and modernisation throughout.
As part of a complete overhaul, the building fabric is upgraded to improve the thermal performance of the house. The design is driven by a restorative approach to the existing house, repairing and reusing as much of the existing fabric as possible. The interventions to the front of the house and the upper floors are limited, preserving key original features, such as tiled fireplaces and picture rails. At the rear, the simple geometry and clean lines of the new interventions reference the modernist movement, building upon the architectural heritage of the street, simultaneously maintaining a real sense of craft throughout the house.
The existing rear extension of poor build quality is replaced, retaining the existing footprint of the house, whilst maximizing the internal floorspace through an open plan layout. Free-flowing kitchen, living and dining space wrap around the external courtyard, flooding the home with natural light. The continuous floor treatment helps extend both the dining space and the already constrained patio, whilst the unobstructed views into the courtyard help make it an active part of the internal space. The proposed material palette of glazed green tiles, limestone render and stained timber reference the local context and complement the existing materials on site, whilst adding a new layer of texture and colour.
