1-12 Grand Union Walk

Terrace of 10 houses and 2 flats, built 1986–88, as part of a wider Sainsbury's development. Designed by Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners (architect in charge Neven Sidor), with structural engineers Kenchington, Little and Partners.

The construction uses concrete block cross walls, concrete floors, and an asphalt-clad timber roof. Front walls are part-glazed and part-clad in smooth-skinned aluminium panels. Back walls are clad in pressed aluminium panels with horizontal ribs, matching the rear of Sainsbury's and Grand Union House.

The houses face north onto the Grand Union Canal, with front doors opening onto a private walkway along the water's edge, accessed from Kentish Town Road. The upper floors are cantilevered over the walkway, increasing the floor plate on the first and second floors. Each house is two bays wide with a flat roof. A steel structure supporting roof gardens was added to the terrace in about 2006.

A dog-leg stair against the east party wall connects each level. The ground floor contains an entrance hall, en-suite bedroom, and plant room with direct access to the car park. A service core against the back wall runs through the house, passing through a utility room on the first floor and a bathroom on the second floor. The first floor has principal rooms arranged in an L-shape around the stair: a living room facing the canal leading to an open-plan kitchen and dining area. The dining area also overlooks the canal and is a top-lit double-height space, with the kitchen towards the rear. The second floor comprises a front bedroom and a mezzanine room overlooking the dining area to the rear (now often enclosed), with the bathroom at the back.

The two flats occupy the end of the terrace near the Kentish Town Road entrance: one is a ground and first-floor maisonette entered from the canal-side walkway, the other a studio flat accessed via a radiused stair tower at the terrace's end.

The exterior employs industrial imagery reflecting the canal-side setting. Each house is defined by alternating in-and-out jettied upper-floor bays. The east bay of each house curves outward from top to bottom, clad in smooth aluminium panels with a vertical row of three horizontally-oriented windows with radiused corners, sealed with black rubber gaskets. The east bay's lobe-like section projects forward of the west bay, which is fully glazed, flat, but canting inward from bottom to top. The lower part can be raised by motorised mechanism, opening to a small balcony. The balcony front cants outward and is formed of slatted timber held on vertical steels, which extend down to form part of the balustrade enclosing the walkway beneath.

At ground floor each bay is demarcated by tapered concrete brackets supporting the jettied upper floors. Bays alternate between smooth white render with clerestory windows and fully glazed sections set back from the walkway up three steps, providing the house entrances. The walkway balustrade comprises alternating slatted timber with bench seats and steel bars, now with an additional steel grid. Steel mesh balustrades of the later roof gardens are visible on the terrace top.

The most striking interior space in each house is the double-height dining area, lit by the full-height openable glazed wall and from above by three radiused skylights. This space is overlooked on the second floor by the mezzanine room and by the front bedroom through a large circular window in the side wall. The stair has open string, beechwood treads and risers with tubular steel newels carrying a glass partition between each flight and a tubular steel handrail. Joinery comprises flush-panel beech doors and square-section door frames without architraves, set flush with the wall face. Door furniture includes steel L-shaped lever handles from D Line.

All houses now have steep flights of stairs at the top providing access to the roof terrace, carefully integrated into the original balustrades. The interiors have otherwise been altered ad hoc over time, though all retain their distinctive double-height dining area, with many having the mezzanine room enclosed for privacy. The flats are understood to have been altered, with more conventional original plans than the houses.