A breathtaking four-bedroom house beside Waterlow Park, completed to a design by the celebrated architects Eldridge Smerin. It was sold by The Modern House in 2013.

The south and west elevations consist of full-height glazing that is entirely frameless. This provides spectacular leafy views across Highgate’s Victorian cemetery, and reduces the mass of the building, settling it into its landscape. By contrast, the street façade is a curtain wall of honed black granite, steel panels and opaque glass, ensuring the utmost privacy.

The house has replaced a 1970s structure designed by the architect John Winter, and uses the same footprint (in an article about Eldridge Smerin’s scheme in Architecture Today, Winter called it “as near to a faultless building as I have seen in a long time.”)

Eldridge Smerin is one of Britain’s foremost architecture practices. Its first project, a private house called The Lawns, was nominated for the Stirling Prize. This house on Swains Lane has been featured in a variety of magazines, including Architecture Today and The World of Interiors, and was the recipient of an RIBA award in 2009.

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