Ice Cream House, Hampstead, North London

A reimagining of a Victorian mid-terrace within the Mansfield Conservation Area

This project began, as the best ones do, with a very clear sense of how our clients wanted to live. Italian and Portuguese by background, they brought a sensibility about domesticity that shaped every decision we made: spaces that feel open and connected without becoming overwhelming, materials that are honest and tactile, a home that could hold a piano, a guitar collection, a serious art collection, and the daily life of a family, all without any of those things feeling like they were competing.

The house is a typical Victorian mid-terrace. The bones are familiar. What the project does is rethink how those bones work together.

The Plan

The ground floor is organised around a partially floating timber stair that runs from the lower ground to the third floor. This wasn't simply a circulation decision. The stair creates a visual thread through the building, connecting the kitchen and dining space, the living room, the music room, the home offices, the playroom, and the bedrooms in a way that makes the house feel inhabited throughout rather than compartmentalised into zones.

The rear extension opens generously to the garden, with large openings that frame views from the kitchen and dining spaces to the original red brick boundary wall beyond. A polished concrete floor runs continuously from inside to out, and terracotta tiles wrap the face of the side extension, adding depth and texture at ground level. The transition between interior and exterior is deliberate rather than abrupt.

On the upper floors, the master suite includes a walk-in wardrobe with bespoke joinery, an ensuite, and a bedroom with views over the neighbouring gardens. The playroom, which sits at an intermediate level, includes a mezzanine accessed by a short flight of steps with a suspended hammock above. It is unambiguously a room designed to be used by children, which is not something every architect remembers to do.

Materials

The material palette was chosen to be lively without being restless, and to work with the clients' furniture, art, and instruments rather than competing with them. Across the main living spaces the approach is relatively restrained: polished concrete, timber, brick. The bathrooms and built-in bedroom joinery are where the more distinct material and colour choices live, including terrazzo floors and tadelakt on the walls and ceilings.

The name came from the clients' shared passion for ice cream, which found its way into the bathroom palette more literally than you might expect, and worked rather well.

Environmental Performance

Ice Cream House follows EnerPHit principles throughout, which is the Passivhaus standard for retrofits. The work included:

Additional insulation to walls, floor, and roof to bring the fabric up to a meaningful performance standard. Airtightness measures throughout the building envelope, with pressure testing to verify the result. An MVHR system, positioned in the guest bedroom wardrobe, providing continuous filtered fresh air while recovering heat from the extracted air. An air source heat pump installed in the rear patio, enclosed in a cedar-clad housing that integrates it into the garden rather than leaving it as an afterthought. Solar PV on the roof. An induction hob in the kitchen. The gas supply has been cut off entirely.

ASHP

The ASHP works via the wet central heating system to provide both space heating through the radiators and domestic hot water. In warmer months it can also provide cooling. The MVHR ensures that the high level of airtightness that makes the building thermally efficient doesn't compromise internal air quality: fresh air is continuously supplied, stale air extracted, and the heat exchanger ensures that very little of the building's warmth leaves with it.

Combined Effect

The combined effect is a home that uses a fraction of the energy of a standard Victorian terrace, maintains a stable and comfortable internal temperature year-round, and has no ongoing dependence on gas.

^{A view of one of the bathrooms will look like when it’s complete, including terrazzo tiles for the floor and tadelakt on the walls and ceiling}

A Home That Performs as Well as It Feels

At RISE, we believe that retrofitting a home isn't just about reducing energy bills. It's about rethinking what a house can be. One that holds its warmth without effort. That breathes cleanly without mechanical noise. That carries the character of its past and the performance of its future in the same walls.

Ice Cream House is what that looks like in practice. A Victorian terrace, reimagined for a family who knew exactly how they wanted to live, and built to perform for the next fifty years.

Thinking about a retrofit or whole-house renovation? Let's talk about what your home could become.

→ Email us at architects@risedesignstudio.co.uk
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