Designs on their neighbours’ architect

One of the owners of this Edwardian house in Highgate, north London, the daughter of an Irishman who made his fortune in London, grew up here. As an adult she returned to live in the house with her husband and, when they decided to open up the rear of their home to let in more light, they only had to nip up the road to find an architect. Looking in through a neighbour’s bay window they saw just the sort of extension they wanted and knocked on the door to ask the owners who their architect was. The fact that they could see the extension from the pavement shows just how successfully architect Brendan Woods, who grew up in Bangor, Co Down, had tied in the old part of the house with the new. Instead of sitting squarely off the back of the house, the flank wall of the extension slants in at an angle just beyond the end of the livingroom in the existing part of the house, taking the eye through to the garden and across to the new kitchen. Opposite the angled extension wall, the garden wall has been slanted slightly the other way to create an exaggerated perspective.

The Irish Times