Haringey Brick Bungalow

The Haringey Brick Bungalow is a new-build two-bedroom home that demonstrates what can be achieved on a highly constrained backland site. Located behind a butcher’s shop on busy Turnpike Lane, the plot is accessed via a narrow 1m-wide passage, requiring a carefully considered design and construction strategy.

The house is formed as two offset volumes, each topped with an asymmetrical pyramid-shaped sedum roof with integrated rooflights. This distinctive roofscape was designed to improve views from neighbouring properties, replacing the fragmented and ad-hoc extensions previously occupying the site.

The arrangement of the two volumes creates a pair of external spaces—a courtyard entrance and a private rear garden—allowing light to penetrate deep into the plan and providing dual aspects to the living and sleeping spaces. A central living, dining and kitchen area spans between the two volumes, with coffered glulam roof structures rising to create generous internal heights and a strong sense of spatial quality.

Materiality is central to the design. Handmade red brick, oak windows and panels, white stone cills and black steel detailing are used consistently both externally and internally, expressing the building’s construction and giving it a crafted, robust character.

The project was delivered from planning through to completion, with all materials and construction elements carefully coordinated to pass through the restricted site access. It demonstrates how complex urban sites can be unlocked to deliver distinctive, high-quality homes through design ingenuity and precise execution.