Sergison Bates Architects

Urban Housing Finsbury Park . London

Sergison Bates Architects . photos: © Sergison Bates . Stefan Müller . video: José María Silva Henández-Gil

The project involves the complete redevelopment of an urban site on Seven Sisters Road, on the edge of Finsbury Park in north London. Three new urban villas of varying height are arranged around a shared pace and are treated as a tightly knit cluster, continuing the typology of villas on Seven Sisters Road and providing forty-four one- to four- bedroom apartments for mixed tenure.

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As a reaction to the paper-thin appearance of much affordable housing, we developed buildings that feel solid and substantial, with a strong tectonic expression of brick and concrete elements that gives them a sense of permanence and weight reminiscent of the nineteenth century villas that exist in this area of London.


The walls are arranged in piers between full height window assemblies with a structure of concrete flat slab and columns. The brickwork, in burnt browns and reds with flush mortar joints, appears in counterpoint to the gently undulating and modulated external wall. The faint forms of bay windows and set-backs suggest both familiarity and difference in a way that feels appropriate within this urban situation, while the space between buildings is charged by the subtle differences between building volumes and their relation to one another.


Apartments are arranged in each corner of the building plan with a central lift core and stair located on an external wall.