A blueprint for future housing: inside the ingenious two-storey home built on a tiny garden plot in Islington

Finding a plot and building a house is a big deal, especially when done at top speed, but for interior designer and artist Zoe Papadopoulou and her partner, Liz, it happened by accident when they were simply looking to downsize.

The result is a stylish and striking two-storey house with an ingenious perforated screen of yellow London stock bricks, an enclosed courtyard, a beautifully designed open-plan ground floor with a mid-century modern Californian vibe, two neat double bedrooms and bathrooms and a generous open-plan kitchen and walk-in utility room.

Filling a tight plot, it demonstrates what meticulous design can do, even on a tight budget. Costing less than many two-bedroom flats in the area this would make a perfect model for London housing — especially if stacked into four-storey low-rise affordable homes.

The couple owned a big Fifties house with a garden in Islington, but in 2014 Liz was diagnosed with terminal cancer, so they needed something smaller and easier to manage. Zoe had done major makeovers to five houses, so had an open mind about what might work.

Searching online, she noticed a plot with planning permission for a two-storey house for sale by auction. Just 30ft x 30ft with a disused workshop on it, and a wall on the road side. Cut from the garden of another house, it was to be sold very soon. “I knew I’d be an idiot even to think about it,” says Zoe, 45.

But just before Christmas she found herself looking up what it had sold for, and discovered that it hadn’t met its reserve price of £500,000. One reason might have been that there were only a few months left to run on the existing planning permission, or that the plot, also in Islington, was so small.

She went to look. Behind its wall, the bit of land was at the end of a little Regency terrace: “I could imagine a house there,” she says, so she and Liz went to the agent, offered the asking price, and bought the plot. The knowledge that they didn’t have a moment to waste drove them.

Zoe earmarked four architects online, to whom they frankly explained why they needed to start at once and stick to a timetable.

One replied that they couldn’t start for more than a year. But another, Paul Archer, got the message. He told them to go and write a brief. “I did it by the next day,” Zoe says.

The plot’s planning permission was for a two-storey house in black brick, but since this is a conservation area of traditional yellow brick, Zoe wanted to use that, but with a twist. She understood there was no room for a traditional garden.

Inside she wanted a modern, open-plan look to suit the couple’s mid-century furniture. And Cyprus-born Zoe also wanted a Mediterranean feel with an internal courtyard, lots of light and a sense of privacy. She would do the interior design, using oak and a lot of white.

Paul quickly came back with a design featuring an area of brick laid in a perforated pattern, which the couple liked so much that they opted for it on two external walls.

This brick screen would go outside concrete block work, and over windows, too. A simple boxy shape was best for budget and to maximise space inside.

An application for a third storey was rejected, so the design was set at two — but Paul dropped part of the ground floor about three feet. This gives generous head-height to the large seating area that provides the focus of the ground floor.

A few broad oak steps down to it and the high-walled, glazed courtyard, add drama.

Ground was broken in March 2015, and the main build finished in spring 2016. Sadly, Liz died at the end of 2015, but as she had wished, she knew exactly what Zoe’s home would look like.

The builder fixed an upstairs room so Zoe could move in over summer to oversee the interior fit-out. Oak-blocked floors add a Fifties touch, as does a substantial oak balustrade screen on the oak stairs.

Well-considered tiling enhances that desired Mediterranean/Fifties feel, while polished concrete for the kitchen and the sunken seated area are dramatic and practical, with an attractive, warm tone.

Zoe designed an oak and white Corian kitchen — “I love Corian, nothing marks it,” she says. The builder’s carpenters made the neatly joined kitchen, whereas she made a Fifties-style sideboard with tiled top from an Ikea carcass. For the fitted seating, she had the smart green upholstery done bespoke.

This surprising house looks much larger inside than its modest exterior implies. The brickwork makes an effective screen while letting in plenty of light, as does the kitchen’s overhead glazed section. Yet there is also a real sense of seclusion.

London needs many more houses like this one: space-saving; big enough for a small family, affordable to build, ecologically sound and using good old London brick and renewable timber. Flashy? No. Delightful and also affordable if built to volume? Yes.