Highgate House Extension

A house extension to improve a late Victorian property in Highgate

Highgate House: this extension creates a large family room, with open-plan kitchen and dining areas. Colour-matched mortar throughout unifies red brick surfaces, suggesting continuous volumes by blurring the distinction between individual bricks. A limewash treatment to interior surfaces gives further consistency.

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This design stems from a desire to create an inverted architecture and landscape: one that might appear to have been excavated from an existing solid rather than constructed from the ground up.

A void at the upper ground floor creates a generous double-height volume to the basement, flooding the space with natural light. A lightwell is also created under the front bay window. The large basement creates three new bedrooms, a second family bathroom, a utility and a playroom.

Brick extends from the new basement extension and also forms the garden landscaping, linking the interior and exterior. The garden is newly landscaped with these continuous matching brick walls and terraces, and a densely planted low-pollen garden to the rear.

Highgate House: living spaces

A timber and terrazzo ‘tray’ is inserted at the ground floor and forms the kitchen and joinery. The terrazzo continues to form a sculptural kitchen island and low-level kitchen units behind. A bank of timber joinery adds much-needed storage for appliances; this joinery ends at a new courtyard window, which brings a glimpse of the internal courtyard garden into the kitchen space.

Exposed timber ‘double joists’ provide the structure whilst adding rhythm and material character to the space. The formal reception room to the front of the property is left as a distinct space, and here, original Victorian details are refurbished. Colour-matched rose balustrades complete the limited material palette internally and externally.

The Project lies in the Highgate Village conservation area and in the Highgate Society area of interest. To see more of our work in Highgate, visit our Highgate Architects page.

Highgate House Extension Project Architects:
Ben Ridley, Amrit Marway

Structural Engineer:
Structure Mode

Location:
Talbot Road, Highgate N6