Stoke Newington House by Ambient Studio reworks a Victorian mid-terrace in Hackney—stepped glazing, rooflights, and pale brick turning a narrow London home into a sequence of light and garden.
The house had generous proportions and a lush south-facing garden, but the long, narrow plan offered little connection to either. The Victorian mid-terrace in Stoke Newington, Hackney, was the kind of London home where rooms exist in series rather than in conversation—each closed off from the next, the garden visible only at the end of a dark corridor. Ambient Studio's brief was clear: create a serene four-bedroom family home that feels open, coherent, and continuously aware of garden and sky, while remaining sensitive to neighbouring properties.
Rather than adding space for its own sake, the interventions choreograph what the architects describe as "a sequence of moments—a breakfast table washed with garden colour, a stair lit like a small lightwell, a shower that opens to the sky." The house changes with weather and season. On the ground floor, two new sightlines now run from front to back, pulling living spaces together and framing long views to planting beyond. A combined side-infill and rear extension forms an open kitchen-dining space shaped by a stepped glazed facade and an L-shaped rooflight, drawing daylight in from multiple directions and orienting the kitchen outward toward the garden.
The moves are sensitive to context. The adjacent neighbour's house sits 1.5 metres lower, so the extension reduces its perceived mass through light, proportion, and careful geometry. At key openings, intricate head detailing creates an infinity effect where glazing reads as extending beyond the ceiling line—a minimal junction that increases the perceived expanse of sky from within, pulling the eye upward and amplifying brightness across the plan. Externally, pale brickwork and light-toned aluminium framing allow the new volumes to read as a contemporary, lightweight addition to a previously solid Victorian shell.
Inside, a restrained palette of natural, earthy materials gives the home its calm, tactile character. Fluted oak joinery, stone paving that continues from inside to out, warm brass details—old and new combine without announcement. The first floor is reconfigured to create a master suite alongside a second bedroom, family bathroom, and integrated laundry. Above, a new outrigger roof extension and rear dormer add a second floor with study and guest bedroom, allowing flexibility as the family's needs evolve. Rooflights are positioned as moments: over the stairs to bring daylight to the centre of the house, and above the upper-floor shower to create the sensation of washing beneath the elements.
Photographed by Lorenzo Zandri, Stoke Newington House is a renovation that understands light as its primary material. Every surface, every opening, every transition between old and new is calibrated to how the day moves through the building—a home that is, above all, a careful study of what it means to live alongside the sky in a dense London terrace.
