Dusheiko House, Stoke Newington

Dusheiko House, Stoke Newington

Dusheiko House is a radical remodelling of a Victorian terrace house in North London.  As it is a home for my family, it was a chance to experiment with space and materiality and to explore ideas about what “home making” meant to us.

Dusheiko House is a deeply personal reinvention of a North London terrace—an experiment and a home, crafted for the architect’s own family.

The project explores the essence of home-making: light, connection, durability and the quiet beauty of everyday rituals. By opening up old divisions and flooding two levels with daylight, the design gently repairs a once dark, fragmented house into a place of welcome and warmth, always rooted in material honesty and joy in making.

Context

Set within the regular constraints of a Victorian terrace, the original house was defined by isolated rooms, heavy corridors, and poor connection to the garden. Multiple split levels meant the heart of the home—the kitchen and dining—were sunken and starved of light. The challenge was emotional as well as spatial: how to make a family home feel connected, durable and uplifting while retaining the street’s character.

Brief

Designing for one’s own family is both a privilege and a testbed. The aim was to transform the gloomy, convoluted circulation into a generous, light-filled core, opening the living space and nurturing a visible connection to the garden. The brief also called for a home that would be easy to live in for many years, with robust, natural finishes and a spirit of craft in every detail—from handrails to bathroom brassware.

Design Approach

Solving the home’s maze-like darkness meant relocating the main stair to one side, aligning movement from entrance to garden. A dramatic, sloped, double-storey skylight washes natural light across both floors, energising the whole interior. As you descend the new timber staircase, the garden becomes an ever-present backdrop. The design foregrounds tactile natural materials: timber, stone, metal, and glass. Warm woods—oak, yew, cumaru and Douglas fir—meet robust stone and refined details. Accents in bronze, copper, and black brassware add a subtle shimmer, and light flows deep into the plan. Passive ventilation and airtight construction, along with clever venting, keep the home both efficient and comfortable.

Outcome

The reimagined Dusheiko House is open yet intimate, contemporary yet enduring. Living spaces enjoy broad diagonal views, making the house feel expansive. Handcrafted joinery and carefully curated materials—inside and out—ensure the home is not just beautiful but made for the richness and mess of everyday family life. Each room is animated by light and connected to the outside, resulting in an uplifting, responsive space, warm in character and resilient in use.

Highlights

• Flooded with daylight via a double-height sloped skylight
• Relocated staircase opens living spaces and connects directly to the garden
• Rich palette of durable, tactile natural materials: timber, stone, metals
• Custom oak datum line unifying inside and outside
• Loft staircase in floating laser-cut steel
• Bathroom skylight that fully opens for an outdoor bathing experience
• Facade of cumaru timber and western red cedar fencing
• Sustainable, highly insulated and passively ventilated