Urban living: maximising space in the city "If you think about Japanese architecture and landscaping, they want to make a private world - and they do so by creating perimeter walls to screen out the outside world," says Hugh. That is much the same as what I have done. The first thing that visitors to the Strange House discover is that it is devilishly hard to find; an unnumbered property at the end of a car park on a side street in Deptford, south-east London. Hugh, 42, and his wife Adriana Ferlauto, 41, a museum and exhibition designer, originally moved to the area in 2002, spending £85,000 on a ground-floor flat carved from an early Victorian house. They immediately spotted a disused pub yard directly behind their courtyard garden and spent the next four years negotiating to buy it from its owner, a housing association. Winning planning consent for the house was relatively straightforward, largely on the basis that the only part of the property that was visible beyond its perimeter wall was its flat roof, clad in corrugated concrete. Work began in September 2009. The site itself had been "a bargain" and to minimise costs Hugh dispensed with digging foundations, instead pouring a concrete slab and assembling a prefabricated timber frame on top of it. Inside, the Swiss spruce has been whitewashed and the floors are grey polished concrete throughout. The hardwood used to build the windows, fitted kitchen and much of the fitted furniture is a genus of Nicaraguan hardwood, cedro macho, sustainably sourced after a swathe of virgin forest was felled during a hurricane and engineered off site. "Because every room has got the same palette it just kind of feels more of a piece," explains Hugh. Despite utilising as much of the site as possible, the house is still very small - just 75 square metres (807 sq ft) - but Hugh has used "every trick in the book" to make it feel as large as possible. The ceilings are 3.2m (10½ft) tall, the generous main living room/kitchen takes up more than half the total floor space, and the bedrooms and bathrooms lead off it, flowing into each other via double doors so that no space is wasted on anything as unnecessary as a corridor. Although the main windows overlook the wall, there are also some smaller windows punctured high in the walls to bring light into the rooms. Work was completed in just seven months, and the family were able to move in in April 2010 - by which time they had a son, Santiago, now two-and-a-half. The build would have been even faster but the hardwood was delayed in transit, leading to a lengthy hiatus mid build. The fact that the house was essentially a prefab, albeit a bespoke prefab, meant that the entire build cost was around £160,000. Now Hugh plans to turn his attention to the flat, which he has planning consent to turn into a live/work space he can use for his practice (hughstrange.com) and as spare space for when guests come to stay. He admits that had the site been in a different location, less overlooked and urban, he might not have adopted for the walled approach. "It is very much about city living," he says. If we were not in London, then you could have more space and views. It is about how you live in the city and how you get light and space and privacy. We are not in Hampstead here. It is quite gritty and within that we have created our own little world. For sale: the space race Tapestry Court, London SW14 £1.19m (themodernhouse.net) This two-bedroom penthouse apartment with views of the Thames has been augmented by a glazed pavilion on its flat roof - used as a sun room, it has sliding doors for warm days. Montagu Square, London W1 £1.65m (knightfrank.com) A duplex apartment with three bedrooms that has been extended to incorporate the basement vaults beneath the outside pavement, creating space for an extra bathroom. Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 £5.25m (knightfrank.com) This classic townhouse was once home to the photographer David Bailey. The owners felt the six-bedroom property was not quite large enough, so as well as building an extra floor in the loft - used as a dance studio - they went for a contemporary twist on the conventional side-return extension, creating a dramatic, double-height, glazed "box" to the rear of the house, which provides even more living space.