Mike Russum of Birds Portchmouth Russum and his spouse Sally Cox share the delights of a home that is influenced by fighter airplanes, boat-building and the Arizona desert, and which won the Individual Home Award at the Test of Time Awards 2025. Finished in 2016 and rephotographed for the Test of Time Awards by Timothy Soar
Developed by designer Mike Russum for himself and his better half, Sally Cox, this four-storey
house in a conservation area in Highgate, north London, integrates prefabrication with standard building to deliver a sustainable, versatile home on a constrained urban website. The building combines compact practical areas with extensive, light-filled living
spaces, while maximising solar gain, daylight and garden views. A brick base supports a prefabricated timber shell– craned into place over a weekend– that forms an elliptical ‘ark’, housing open-plan living locations and a winter garden. The home has actually proved to be highly adaptable, supporting different modes of living and working, with the upper dais and lower workplace often utilized for art, writing, and visitor lodging. Each level has a strong visual and physical connection to the tiered garden, that includes a wildflower-roofed shed and rainwater harvesting system. CAPTION Products were selected for their recyclability and performance, consisting of cold-moulded wood innovation utilized in
marine and aeronautical applications. The MVHR system operates in tandem with passive functions, such as roofing lanterns and conservatory ventilation. Energy costs stay low thanks to high levels of insulation, natural ventilation, LED lighting, and a buoyancy-driven thermal technique. Budget restrictions caused a self-build method, with subcontractors managed as funds allowed. Your house is open to the general public for Open House every September, and has actually brought in more than 1,500 thousand visitors considering that it was built. CAPTION Mike Russum The website, which became available at an auction, is really near Highgate Tube Station
. It’s at
the head of Wood Lane, which is rather high, and rises towards Muswell Hill Road and Archway Road. It’s an extremely narrow sliver of land– about six-metres large and 25-metres long. And at the southern edge, there’s a footpath that drops down to an entryway to Highgate Tube Station. The street is a little an architectural zoo. Our home lies between two masonry homes, however there are buildings from many different eras and they sort of reveal the architecture and innovation of their times. It ranges from a little gothic pavilion to a 1960s ribbon window development, with numerous Edwardian homes and a 1970s brick and concrete number at the lower end of the roadway. We have actually pushed back the entrance exterior to make space to park an automobile, with a cantilevered bay above. The security railings at the front of your home have this sort of wavy type, recommending a secret vessel floating above a sea, or an airplane hovering above a cornfield. Sally Cox I truly desired a bright space with lots of sunlight– daylight– entering into the house. CAPTION Mike Russum On the street
side, your house
is quite closed to the road, because we’re attempting to leave out traffic sound. But it opens far more on the garden side. There’s a reasonable quantity of glazing, so at any time of day, if the sun is out, it permeates this upper space. Sally Cox I desired inspiring areas for art and sculpture, because I have actually
taken up sculpture in my retirement. Mike Russum The job is quite about a journey onto this secret vessel, and a
narrative about how you advance up through the structure. The detailing does sort of doff its cap to marine or private yacht architecture. A gangway results in the entry point and we have a sort of tiny lighthouse brightening the entryway hall. Sally’s office has a small balcony underneath the elliptical structure above, and a desk where she makes a few of her charming lumber sculptures. Then you have this sloped gangway that extends approximately the living area and takes you up to the last location, the winter garden, which is held back the walls, and sort of hovers in space. The winter season garden has built in circular furnishings, consisting of a desk, seat, and planters. The cacti in the planters came from Germany and were initially about six inches high. Now it’s like a bit of Arizona chiselled into Highgate. They have a terrific quality, relating to the trees beyond, but likewise offering up a quite wonderful view for individuals coming up the walkway from the underground station.
CAPTION Sally Cox I desired great views. There are great deals of trees around, so in summertime you get the tree canopies, and then there’s a various view in winter
, when the leaves have actually gone. Mike Russum From every point in the building you have this view down onto the garden, which is quite lusciously planted, and a type of verdant open air salon. It’s ended at the end by the walkway that extends down to television station. But it also has this panoramic view over trees– there’s an extremely attractive forest setting on the south side– and views of east London in the far distance.
Sally Cox The bedrooms required to be screened from noise, warm in the winter season and cool in the summer season.
Mike Russum The house is located on rather a pronounced hill, so we have actually cut the bed rooms down into the ground level to provide acoustic screening for them. And obviously, they don’t have the same need for daylight as the living areas. This lower part of your home is of masonry construction, which cost- successfully deals with embedding the spaces into the side of the hill. The bed rooms are cellular, orthogonal areas that relate, of course, to the orthogonal nature of a bed, in a space-efficient method. There are two bedrooms. The main bed room suite has a restroom in the centre of the strategy and an outdoor patio outside, looking towards the shed at the end of the garden, which has a glorious wildflower roofing system. The guest bed room has a small ensuite restroom tucked below the staircase.
CAPTION Sally Cox I desired a generous dining
volume, which would be good for amusing. Mike Russum The double-height kitchen/dining location is at the base of the upper-level living space, an open-plan elliptical lozenge made from plywood cold-formed over softwood ribs. It was prefabricated offsite, in the north of England, and craned into position over a weekend. Its structure is informed by the mosquito airplane, which was created in the Second World War, and was an extremely nimble and fast airplane. In reality it was quicker than the German fighter aircrafts. It could only bring a number of bombs, however it would drop those bombs, and then by the time the Germans had actually understood, it was on its way back to England, and extremely few of them were shot down. You had a better life span as a pilot of a mosquito than state the Lancaster Bomber. On the street side, it echoes the bay windows of the neighbouring buildings, and on the south side, it suggests that, as the sun circulates, there’s less shadowing of the neighbouring windows.
Sally Cox It was very important that your home was environmentally and cost efficient.
Mike Russum The main lantern has a sort of Heath Robinson lifting device, which raises the glass by 6 inches so we can expel hot air from the conservatory during the summer season. It’s a jubilant location to live throughout the year.