A Return Home – Highgate Park House by Vokes and Peters
As a nostalgic return to the clients’ roots, Highgate Park House represents their coming home to an area with which they affectionately resonate. Vokes and Peters expresses a crafted and heritage approach through a contemporary and refined lens.
Located abutting the shared public park of its namesake, Highgate Park House sits in quietly suburban Highgate Hill, a place of resonance for its owners, who had grown up in the area and therefore had a familiar affection for the neighbourhood. The project sees the extension and modification of an existing cottage that had been bestowed with an array of previous ill-fitting modifications. As a part restoration and part extension effort, the process of stripping back, rebuilding and expanding allows a preservation of history and a forward-projected approach, curating a home of longevity, fit for purpose. Vokes and Peters adopts elements of the surrounding community and context, reinterpreting them in both crafted and formal ways as a nod to the important lineage of the area and those who built it.
As a part restoration and part extension effort, the process of stripping back, rebuilding and expanding allows a preservation of history and a forward-projected approach, curating a home of longevity, fit for purpose.
Endowed with its own historical reference, the original cottage structure was home to a prominent early settler after which it is believed the adjacent park was named, George Wilson. As a result of migrant influxes over the preceding years and the coming together of international styles and aesthetic approaches, the traditionally European-style weatherboard cottage became the recipient of a number of Mediterranean additions. As an homage to this unique melding of cultures and the skilled crafts people who migrated to the area, Vokes and Peters wanted to infuse an essence of this in the resulting build. Elements such as bricked arches, decorative steel (crafted by the client’s father) and verdant productive gardens were essential to retaining this character.
With interior design by Georgia Cannon and landscape by Dan Young Landscape Architects, Highgate Park House becomes the purpose built and customised home for its family of four. While respecting the heritage of the area and the home itself, the resulting approach is driven by a sense of privacy and seclusion. Overlooked by two tall apartment towers, it was key to ensure the home and its connection to the outdoor provided a sense of enclosure. As a space for its residing residents as well as a large number visiting family, each of the living, dining and kitchen reflect a deliberate generosity, allowing for an opening to the outdoor spaces for gatherings in courtyard gardens. By raising floor levels and incorporating vertical elements within the garden, sightlines are disrupted and onlooking is deterred. The materiality takes influence from its community, with an emphasis on painted brick and masonry elements, ensuring the home fit comfortably in place.
Highgate Park House takes influence from the layered historical and cultural references of its past and reimagines a home of contemporary relevance. Vokes and Peters uses refinement and curious details to add personality and allow the clients themselves to make their mark on their home.
