Inside Architect Tim Robinson's Hackney Home & Hidden Garden Studio

Step inside Plaster House - Architect Tim Robinson’s own ground-floor flat in Hackney, East London, where a one-bedroom conversion with an outside toilet became a two-bedroom home that opens straight onto a tropical garden, with an award-winning studio at the end of it 🏡✨

Tim of Sonn Studio bought the flat back in 2018. A developer had converted it cheaply and quickly, putting the living room at the front of the house and the bedroom at the back — which made sense for noise, but left no connection at all to a garden that runs 15 metres. Flipping that was the first move: bedroom to the front, living space to the back, and a clear sightline from the front door through to the existing apple tree.

The extension was designed to feel carved out of stone. Roughcast and smooth render with plaster finishes run inside and out, giving it a monolithic, sculptural form, and the palette stays tight throughout — light wide-panel oak flooring, stained dark oak cabinetry, forest green bouclé and grey terrazzo worktops. Timber bi-fold windows and a full-height pivot door pull the garden in, and the rooflight above the kitchen is deliberately larger than the opening you can see, with the ceiling chamfered down so light carries deeper into the plan. The builder questioned that detail at the time.

The sunken conversation pit sits below the apple tree and was the most technically awkward part of the build — the wall had to be underpinned and the seating detailed around the main sewer running directly beneath it. Elsewhere the joinery hides almost everything: a pop-up television, wireless charging set into the floor, curtains on concealed tracks, a mirrored cabinet that slides out of a slot at the end of the wall, a worktop extended just enough to hide the sponges, and a fold-out dressing table built into the bedroom headboard.
At the end of the garden is Terrazzo Studio, built first and finished before the house. Inspired by a design and research trip to Mexico, it’s wrapped in bespoke forest green terrazzo cladding, with micro-cement flooring running from inside to out, a stained cork desk along one wall and a bed that folds down out of the joinery to turn it into a guest room.

The main contractor only took the house to shell. Everything after that — the kitchen, the bathroom, every piece of joinery — Tim and his partner fitted out themselves, living down in the studio while they worked through it.