Sarah, a maker of modern jewellery, and Coneyl, a freelance photographer, wanted a modern home from which they could both work. But they also wanted a uniquely personal house. So they commissioned architect Mike Tonkin to come up with a radical design for their long, thin site in a north London residential street.
The result is a house designed around a water garden and built to look delicate while being strong. A pair of buildings - a house and a double-height studio - face each other at either end of the long water garden. They are connected by a colonnaded walkway on one side and a glass-walled wing comprising a workshop and bedrooms on the other.
Grand Designs is a Channel 4 TV series covering unusual architectural house-building projects, presented by Kevin McCloud.
The properties featured in the series vary wildly from homes underground to converted water towers, with the only common factor being that they're all rather unusual or extravagant in some way.