CANONBURY HOUSE – THOR

For our client in this house refurbishment in Canonbury, Islington the one silver lining of having to call the fire brigade at 2am on New Year’s Day, and having much of their house written off by smoke damage was getting a tabula rasa to redesign and refurbish their ground floor.

They wanted a more open kitchen-dining area, with a stronger connection to the garden. When we visited, we could see why. A previous project had left a column standing in the middle of the space, and the garden was one meter higher than the dining room floor.

Our clients were amazed when we told them we could make this column disappear. With a bit of structural magic (i.e. cranked beams) from our structural engineer Conisbee and a fair amount of digging in the garden, we created the relaxed open plan space they wanted, with an excellent connection to the garden, which we also redesigned. We took the opportunity of opening up the house to make an internal window to give a view from the first-floor playroom down through the dining space and out into the garden (a trick we later repeated in our Islington House – Jupiter project).  

“Of the three major works we’ve done to our house, this was the best designed, managed & built” Client. 

This house refurbishment in Canonbury Islington was featured in Grand Designs magazine.