Designer Jonathan Tuckey on contributing to the architectural legacy of Walter Segal’s House in Highgate
Berlin-born architect Walter Segal is best remembered for his eponymous construction method, which enabled people to self-build their homes using an easy-to-assemble timber-frame system. His family home, currently for sale via The Modern House, is a beautifully-proportioned design set back from North Hill in Highgate on a serene plot that’s surrounded by greenery.
Rather excitingly, sale of the house includes planning permission for an extension to the rear, which would add an enlarged living room, and a master bedroom with dressing area and en-suite bathroom.
Building on the significant architectural merit of a house designed by a man whose name carries some serious cachet is no small task. With architectural designer Jonathan Tuckey, however, whose studio has built its name renovating, updating and sympathetically adding to existing buildings, the proposed scheme is one that responds to and furthers the architectural legacy of the site. We caught up with Jonathan to get his take on the project.
Jonathan, what was your brief?
Jonathan: “Our clients loved the house and had done a beautiful job with the interiors, so they didn’t want to interfere with that too much. The brief was to extend the house in a way that would mean it could better cope with and accommodate modern family life, without losing any of the original character.
“The house was already serving the needs of a family of five, but there was a feeling that as the children grew up, or, as might happen, someone with a larger family might buy it, there would be a need for more space to deal with big occasions, feasts or parties.
“We titled the project ‘The Great Room’, with the idea that the extension would become the central entertaining space of the house.”
How did you arrive at your design?
Jonathan: “We knew it wasn’t going to use brickwork or be a glass box because it would be too close to the original Segal house. I thought what we came up with should have a monolithic character to it, almost like it was there before the building.
“With that emerges two opposing architectural languages, with the extension embodying mass, weight and permanence, juxtaposing with the Segal house, which was designed with the idea of making things as thin, light and taught as possible.”
What makes the variety of the spaces so important to your design?
Jonathan: “The main house was built in a time that was striving for maximum efficiency in architecture. The books that came out of that era talked about the exact amount of space a person needs to move around and the ideal size of furniture according to the spatial dimensions of a room. You can see it in the Segal house, where the bedrooms have a perfect compactness to them.
“It’s an efficiency that permeates the entire house: the ceiling heights are the same throughout, and there are no split level spaces. With the extension, we wanted to incorporate contrasting and opposing elements, which I think is what makes housing really beautiful.”
How will those contrasts be experienced by the house’s occupants?
“When you walk into the new part of the house, it will be via a glazed link, which will have a view to a small internal garden, and then you’ll step down into a brick-lined space, instantly giving a different perspective on the outdoor space.
“And we’ve also designed a window ledge, allowing you to see the garden at plant level – you’ll appreciate the garden in a different way than from the house, where a slightly elevated view of the whole expanse is afforded.
“We’ve put in glazed corners too so that we contribute something other than the sheer glazing used in the main house. Also, while the view of the garden is serene and wonderful, we wanted to offer new perspectives from the extension, so have orientated the windows towards Berthold Lubetkin’s Highpoint.”
“Together, the two parts combine to form a very large, yet also intimate amount of living space.”
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The Computer-Generated Image of the proposed extension is by Studio Archetype
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