A NORTH LONDON HOME BURSTING WITH COLOUR

Tufnell Park, London N19

Mercers Road is a storey of how a family makes an indelible imprint on the house they inhabit. It is about how people and buildings are intrinsically linked. It’s about how family life is big and messy and full of life and colour and difficult and simple and unique and ordinary.

It is about how meaning in architecture is about a building being meaningful to someone, rather than carrying meaning that can be communicated to others. I admit that part doesn’t quite make sense.

Jack and Miranda bought this beautiful, stately, semi-detached Victorian villa in Tufnell Park in 2015. It had the potential to be everything they wanted in their forever home. It was also just a few streets away from their previous home, that they were outgrowing.

The previous owners, a couple of artist and art-dealing gentlemen, had established a pattern of life in the house that was quite different from what Jack and Miranda had in mind. Big changes were afoot, and Jack & Miranda were energised with the requisite enthusiasm needed to undertake a project of this scale.

In 2018 they came to us to set about making this house theirs. They had two children, a boy and a girl, and were just about to give birth to their third – a little boy. They had articulate visions for how this house was going to be for them, for the future, forever.

Design meetings were intense affair of ideas and opportunities and challenges. They often lasted well into the evening, often over dinner, after the kids had gone to bed.

Despite being locally listed and in a conservation area, planning consent was granted with little fuss. The design quietly focusses on the transformation of the basement into a generous kitchen / dining / living room, connected to a lush tiered garden via a sun-trap of a courtyard. The new extension nestles into the landscape by virtue of its intensive green roof, brimming with grasses and wild flowers.

Works started on site in 2019, completing just as Covid lockdown took hold in early 2020.

Within the first few months of construction, Miranda was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer. She remained an inspiring force of boundless positive energy throughout her battle with cancer. Her vivacity, charm, positivity, and humour suffuses the project with colour, optimism, and life.

Heartbreakingly, Miranda died in June 2020 at home with her family. She is missed tremendously by everyone.