The back façade and steeply sloping garden of this late 19thC semi-detached house look south towards Highgate Woods across an archery field. By profession fashion-aware, our clients wanted to extend and open up the ground floor for entertaining and to make the most of its wonderful setting. Subtle co-ordination of the levels of living, kitchen, and dining rooms with those of the new garden room, deck and garden itself and careful consideration of stepping ceilings, daylighting and sightlines frame the best of the trees and views, to create visual theatre and inside-outside ambiguity.

This required delicate negotiations with neighbours and planners, resulting in the extension’s tall volume being articulated and lowered along its western boundary, and its roof planted, giving a new floating plane to the garden.

In contrast to this spatial complexity, the design called for a calm modern minimalism in choice of materials and finishes: a structural steel frame, pale yellow maple flooring, white render and plaster walls, contextual and glass brickwork, with elegant screens of dark metal glazing, gridding green transparency.