Tilde House

Works are complete on our Grade II Listed semi-detached villa in Canonbury.

As a practice based in Islington, this is one of several Grade II listed projects we are working on.

The project involves substantially refurbishing an existing Georgian property and a modern new build extension that replaces a dilapidated structure built alongside it.

Close consideration of the Conservation Area, the Local Authority, and the neighbours meant limitations to external ‘public realm’ changes. This posed a significant design challenge for us to alter and update it sympathetically.

As a practice, we valued our role as custodians of an asset of this age and wanted to ensure that alterations to the main part of the property would not harm its fabric or its listing. We undertook extensive Heritage consultation and design developments to minimise the effect on the historic property.

The result provides a contemporary design on the garden side and a traditional front elevation with a high-quality finish. In the interior, the plans were altered to provide rooms, including a dining room, kitchen, and bathrooms suited to the family’s needs.

The project’s focal point is the dining room, which forms the main link between the existing house, the contemporary extension, and the garden. From this space, we derived the inspiration for the pleated roof that undulates between the dining room and the kitchen, expressing each room’s hipped and pitched roof formation, respectively. The parquet pattern of the flooring wiggles out of this room into the kitchen and onto the terrace at the side and rear of the house, tying the new and old together. Echoes of the folds can be found in the sawtooth bricks, the expression of the faceted seating at the rear, the lighting, and other fixtures and fittings in the house.