City North Place, City North East Tower, N4

An apartment of warm oak, woven bamboo and soft plaster tones, set high within one of Finsbury Park’s most striking pieces of modern architecture.

Rising in pale precast concrete above Finsbury Park, City North is one of North London’s most assured recent buildings. The scheme was first drawn by Benson & Forsyth, the practice behind the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, before Rolfe Judd refined it and carried it through to completion. Two towers anchor the composition at either end. Their façades are built up in stacked volumes, deep-set windows and slender vertical fins, with a long glazed seam running up one flank to catch the light. There is something of post-war civic ambition to this development, a building designed to be read from right across the neighbourhood. The detailing, however, is entirely contemporary.

The apartment itself has been finished by its owners with a collector’s eye for texture. The tone is set in the entrance hall, where a full wall of sliding storage is faced in finely woven bamboo and edged in slim black lines, a detail with a distinctly Japanese sensibility. Beyond, the living space unfolds over more than 20ft towards a wall of slate-framed glazing and pale, wide oak boards run the full length of the plan. The walls have been finished in a softly mottled, plaster-effect texture that catches the light, so the colour shifts throughout the day – cool and chalky in the morning and warmer by evening. The proportions are generous, allowing a natural sequence from kitchen to dining to a sitting area gathered around the light. A glazed door opens onto a covered balcony, a sheltered, loggia-like space for morning coffee or a few pots of herbs. Wall-mounted air conditioning keeps the interiors comfortable through the summer.

The kitchen occupies the inner end of the plan in a neat L-shape. Handleless cabinetry in high-gloss white is set against pale stone-effect worktops and a soft blue-grey glass splash back, washed in light from concealed strips beneath the wall units. Above runs a band of the same woven bamboo found in the hallway, a thread of continuity that warms the gloss and ties the apartment together. Integrated appliances include an oven, induction hob, extractor and tall fridge-freezer, alongside an under mount stainless steel sink with a gooseneck mixer tap.

The bedroom is set apart from the living space, and here the palette softens to white walls and mink-toned carpet. A single floor-to-ceiling window draws in light and frames a long view across North London’s Victorian rooftops to the green ridge beyond. A double fitted wardrobe with mirrored sliding doors provides generous storage while doubling both the light and the view.

The bathroom takes a warmer, more enveloping turn. Large-format porcelain tiles in a sandstone tone wrap the room from floor to ceiling, set against dark wood-grain joinery. A bath with an overhead rainfall shower, a separate handheld and a folding glass screen sits beside a sculptural oval vessel basin on a stone-effect counter. A wall-hung WC with concealed cistern and a tall chrome heated towel rail complete the room. It’s a room made for long baths with a glass of wine.

Beyond the apartment, residents have a 24-hour concierge as well as access to The Pavilion, a landscaped roof garden and lounge with sweeping views across the capital. At street level, the Finsbury Park Picturehouse opened in 2021, its lobby is anchored by a seven-metre mural by the artist Dale Lewis, celebrating the area’s history. The cinema arrived fifty years after the old Astoria closed its doors as a picture house, it later became the Rainbow Theatre, where Jimi Hendrix first set his guitar alight on stage in 1967.

The Neighbourhood: Finsbury Park

Finsbury Park sits where three boroughs meet and it has a fantastically layered, cosmopolitan character to show for it. The park itself opened in 1869 and stretches across 110 acres, with a boating lake, tennis courts and a summer calendar of events, all just a few minutes’ walk away. Around the corner, the Park Theatre occupies a once-tired concrete office block, transformed in 2013 with early backing from Ian McKellen and Alan Rickman into one of London’s most respected off-West End stages. Stroud Green Road begins almost at the building’s edge, its long run of independent cafés, shops and restaurants climbing the hill towards Crouch Hill.

Dotori, a tiny family-run Korean and Japanese restaurant that has drawn queues for well over a decade, is a minute away. So is Rowans Tenpin Bowl, a gloriously unreconstructed local institution of bowling lanes, karaoke booths and late-night DJs. On Perth Road, the Faltering Fullback is known for its rambling multi-tiered beer garden strung with greenery. Transport links are exceptional. Finsbury Park Station is moments away, with Victoria and Piccadilly line services plus Great Northern and Thameslink trains - King’s Cross is just two stops away on the Victoria line and you can get to Oxford Circus in under ten minutes.