Pine House - A Sustainable Victorian Terrace Renovation & Self-Build in Peckham, London

Pine House is Polysmiths founder Charles Wu's own home, a 200-year-old Peckham terrace reimagined as a bold, low-carbon self-build, delivered in six months, on time and on budget.

Pine House transforms a 200-year-old Victorian terrace in Peckham into a generous, light-filled home for contemporary life. Polysmiths removed a mid-floor to carve out a double-height kitchen and living space, drawing daylight deep into the plan and revealing the original Victorian structure at full height.

A suspended mezzanine library bridges reading and working above; at the rear, a single-storey extension holds a cork-lined listening room with the quiet, absorbed character of a Japanese teahouse. An intimate entrance threshold, inspired by the Japanese Genkan, marks the passage from street to home.

The brief was the architect's own: founder Charles Wu wanted a family home that could also hold an office, a library and a room for listening to music, all within the long, narrow proportions of London's most common housing stock.

The response is spatial invention within tight constraints, the creative problem-solving a terraced-house transformation demands. Following an eight-week planning approval and six months on site, Pine House was delivered on time and on budget, with a final cost variance of just one per cent: a repeatable model for renovating London's Victorian terraces with rigour and discipline.

Pine House treats sustainability as a design discipline rather than a checklist. Polysmiths retained and reused the existing Victorian structure, chose structural timber over steel, and selected every material for both feeling and low embodied carbon: carbon-negative cork and solid Radiata pine, breathable lime plaster, travertine, and a weathering larch trellis that dissolves the line between building and garden.

Like all Polysmiths projects, it follows no fixed house style; the design is led by the client's story, in the practice's words, building a sense of belonging.

(All images by Lorenzo Zandri)