Nicknamed the Rusty House by neighbours, this cinematic two-storey house radically transforms a neglected street corner in Brockley. The corten clad volume rests above a reconstructed garden wall to clearly mark the entrance to one of Brockley’s forgotten mews’. Behind the tree-lined streets of four storey Victorian houses runs a parallel unmade road made up of garages and workshops. Over the years, the local authority together with the Brockley Society, have rebuffed many attempts to develop these structures into residential dwellings. Yet they have occasionally given ground, where the design is considered to be exceptional. The house replaces what was once a jumbled collection of garages and out buildings. The scheme creates a playful and sculptural interpretation of the mews / stabling typology, combined with a form of open plan/ living connected to an external courtyard. The corner plot, owned by a local couple, formed the gateway to one of the linear Mews’ typical of this part of Brockley. It has elevations to the unmade mews, the main road and private gardens. It was clear from the onset that any design for a house here needed to be special.