Puzzlebox House
A refurbishment of a Grade II listed house on the Regent’s Canal, using freestanding joinery, glass, sliding doors and fold-away furniture to make a narrow terrace house feel larger than its plan.
The house has stood beside Regent's Canal since the 1850s, in what is now the Duncan Terrace and Colebrooke Row conservation area. Grade II listed, most of the original survives intact above basement level, and it is alone in its row in opening directly onto the towpath to the rear. Its owners, a journalist and a film producer, asked for a home that could reconfigure around their work and their love of entertaining.
Victorian terraces can be narrow, and their deep plans retain light near the windows. The design works to sensitively lift that Victorian gloom. Glass and mirrors are set into the joinery to carry views and daylight deep into the interior, cabinets float above the historic skirtings so the floors run visibly beneath them, doors slide and beds fold away.
The lower ground floor becomes the social heart of the home. Lowering the floor, the front area and the courtyard gives the level a generous height and brings the space beneath the front entrance steps into use. New joinery reinstates the plan form lost in 1970s alterations, and the kitchen resettles at the rear. Freestanding joinery forms a puzzle box of cabinets containing a sink, ovens, display shelves, magazine and newspaper racks, with sliding doors that close the working kitchen away when the couple entertain.
Colour changes by floor in response to each room’s light and outlook: darker tones at lower-ground level, greens facing the canal trees, warmer reds in the west-facing rooms and blues beneath the mansard overlooking the city.
Each intervention is reversible, with bathrooms, wardrobes and fitted elements mounted through floors rather than fixed into historic walls. The rear garden was landscaped to make the canal part of the house's daily life again, with the lower-ground-floor rooms opening towards the canal and towpath.
