The Space Between

The Space Between is a minimalist house located in Highgate, London, designed by Matthew Giles Architects. A seven-meter fall across the site dictated everything. Where most projects resist topography, this Highgate retrofit embraces it as organizing principle, transforming a steep hillside condition into a choreographed sequence of half-level living spaces that ascend with the land itself. The kitchen, dining room, and sitting room climb the gradient in measured increments, each volume physically distinct yet bound through sight lines that preserve the sense of a unified domestic realm. This sectional strategy – borrowed from split-level precedents in midcentury California hillside houses – creates what the architects describe as “intimacy and release,” where compression and expansion become spatial tools rather than formal gestures.

The material language reinforces this tectonic clarity. Travertine appears in two states: rough-hewn blocks that register the earth’s raw geology and polished planes that catch and reflect light across interior thresholds. Raw concrete structural elements remain exposed, their formwork marks visible as evidence of construction logic. Against this mineral severity, timber introduces warmth without sentimentality, its grain and color providing human scale within otherwise rigorous compositions. This tripartite palette – stone, concrete, wood – recalls Carlo Scarpa’s additions to the Castelvecchio Museum, where new interventions honor existing structures through material honesty rather than mimicry.

The green roof operates on multiple registers. Functionally, it manages stormwater runoff and provides thermal insulation. Visually, when viewed from the garden’s upper reaches, it suggests the landscape has simply folded over the building envelope, blurring the boundary between constructed and natural ground. This gesture extends the architects’ larger ambition: treating architecture and landscape as interlocking systems rather than separate domains. A new garden annex at the site’s far end establishes visual dialogue with the main house, the two structures framing outdoor rooms between them.

Sustainability measures embed themselves within architectural decisions rather than appearing as add-ons. The concrete frame doubles as thermal mass, its density moderating temperature swings without mechanical intervention. High-performance glazing and strategic insulation reduce energy demand, while the retention of original timber structure and period details – cornicing, flooring – preserves embodied carbon that demolition would have released. The green roof supports biodiversity and mitigates urban heat island effects, its layered assembly performing environmental work invisible from street level.

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