Finding a DIY solution to London's hot housing market

Architects Alexander Hills and Anthony Engi Meacock joined forces and resources to carve out a clever self-build house from a dilapidated old garage. Cat Olley gets a tour of the unique space

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A friend happy to indulge the odd lament about the state of the London housing market is a precious thing. A friend with a solution? A Even better. Childhood pals Alexander Hills and Anthony Engi Meacock pursued different routes into architecture, but like many Londoners in their late 20s, they found fresh kinship when they struggled to secure their first homes in the capital. "It was a case of mutually looking for places and not being able to afford anything that was even moderately nice," says Engi Meacock, a co-founder of Turner Prize-winning architecture collective Assemble.

Though each had a decent deposit, freelance contracts made getting a mortgage tricky and pushed anything beyond a small one-bed decidedly out of reach. It wasn't long before the selfbuild conversation started. "We thought that by combining forces and resources, including our professional skills and the unbounded energy of twenty-somethings, we could deliver something extraordinary for the same financial outlay. Building together seemed much more efficient and enjoyable," says Engi Meacock.

This was 2013 and although the market was yet to reach fever pitch, suitable sites were scarce. Buying at auction seemed like a good option for people taking their DIY approach, but for months the duo were outbid on anything that could facilitate a two-bedroom build. A Peckham coach house with a guide price of £180,000 that sold for more than half a million ("it had a right of access that meant you could have held the development next to it to ransom") and an old yard near London Fields that did double that after a bidding frenzy were among the plots the pair missed out on. "We were cycling around London, wandering down alleys, knocking on doors. We asked after a site just down the road and got chased off by a very forceful character," recalls Hills.