This project has been featured in The Modern House, Dezeen, Divisare, Enki, Hypebeast, Archello among others.
Photography by Lorenzo Zandri

About Studio

Studio McW was founded by David McGahon and Greg Walton. The practice operates across London and the UK, with a young talented team, working on a diverse typology of sectors including high-end private residential and mixed-use schemes. The practice projects are characterized by unexpected and surprising architectural details, with the use of natural materials that portray an element of craft.

Brick walls and a glass door with a navy green frame define the home's entrance. — Brick walls and a glass door with a navy green frame define the home’s entrance.

After entering the house, a modest space served as the living room.

The kitchen countertop and furnishings cabinets match.

In the middle of the cabinet is a small bench for tea and coffee mugs. — In the middle of the kitchen cabinet is a small bench for tea and coffee mugs.

This is a private, intimate workspace that doubles as a dramatic space for entertaining while seeing the rear garden through the glass window.

Follow this path to the entrance that opens to the backyard.

This area was designed with the purpose of maintaining views through the house and into the backyard, letting light in at specified times of the day, and providing cross ventilation.

The Aperture House is an extension to an end-of-terrace Edwardian property in north London. The project originated from a new set of requirements from our client after becoming intimately acquainted with the confines of their home during the first national lockdown.

The brief prompted an approach to the project based on carefully placed apertures and openings in the façade, roof and joinery that reconsider domestic threshold and connection in the wake of the pandemic. Residential architecture needs to work harder to meet new demands; the open plan expansive layout is no longer a romantic aspiration.

The design of The Aperture House allows the clients to be together, but also to be alone, to work and reflect; a space that maintains connection without sacrificing privacy. For example, the dining room is multi-use, it can be a private intimate workplace but also a dramatic space for entertaining. The mass of the extension was shifted back towards the rear garden, creating an offset volume that allowed for a small central courtyard to draw daylight into three rooms at the core of the home.

Openings in the new extension were set back within deliberately deep, angled brick thresholds which were designed to retain views through the house and into the rear garden, let in light at specific times of the day, as well as a means of cross ventilation and to create a purposeful entrance into the interior realm. A single, off-center opening in the pyramidal roof form is orientated to capture the slithers of light between the neighboring buildings and sit directly above a bespoke dining table.