Extension and reconfiguration

Rear extension and family-space transformation

A rear extension used to reshape the relationship between kitchen, family space and garden, with a new kitchen and family room, and a closer connection between the internal family space and the garden.

Scope: Architecture, interior design
Existing: A rear grown by accretion
Added: Two storeys, clad in dark timber

The house as found, the elevation that replaced it, and the two rooms the addition was built for.

01
As found

A garden the house had its back to

The rear had grown by accretion: a tiled outrigger, a flat-roofed store and a patio squeezed between them. Inside, the family were using one small room for sitting, eating and getting to the kitchen.

The rear of the house before the work, seen along the garden past a greenhouse — Existing condition Three roof pitches and two claddings, all added at different times. The best part of the garden is the far end, which nothing in the house faced.

The family living space before the work, with a sofa, dining table and a glazed internal door — Existing condition Sofa, table and the route through to the kitchen all in one room, lit from a single side. This is the room the extension was designed to release.

02
The elevation

One addition in place of four

The accumulated additions came off and a single two-storey volume replaced them, in one material, with the original render left visible where it meets the neighbour.

The rear elevation before the work, with a tiled outrigger and a palm in the corner of the patio — Before The tiled outrigger and the small windows that came with it. Only one opening on this face was ever more than a metre wide.

The proposed rear elevation, a two-storey dark timber volume with a folded gable and wide openings at ground level — After The new gable takes its pitch from the old roof but is folded and clad in dark boards, so it belongs to the house without imitating it. The ground floor opens almost entirely.

03
The garden face

Three openings, each doing a different job

The rear extension close to, showing a study window, wide sliding doors and a projecting window seat on a brick plinth — Extension, from the terrace A fixed window to the study on the left, sliding doors to the family room in the middle, and a window seat pushed out beyond the wall on the right so someone can sit in the garden without leaving the room. The brick plinth under the cladding is the one place the old house is quoted, and it keeps the timber off the ground.

04
The kitchen

Storage taken to the walls, so the room stays a room

The kitchen, with full-height timber joinery, an open bookshelf run and a stone-topped island with four stools — Kitchen Every cupboard is in a full-height run along the two long walls, which leaves the middle of the plan clear for one island. The open shelving is deliberately not kitchen storage: books, on the wall a kitchen would normally fill, because this room is also the way through the house.

05
The family room

The three things that were in one room, now in one space

Sitting, eating and cooking are still together, which is what the family wanted. They are simply no longer competing for the same six square metres.

The family room and dining space in the extension, with a rooflight, a clerestory over the sliding doors and a window seat — Family room and dining Light now arrives three ways: the rooflight over the middle of the plan, the clerestory above the sliding doors, and the window seat set into the thickness of the wall. The old room was lit from one side, which is the single biggest change here and the one photographs least.

06
Completed

Seen from the end of the garden

07
Outcome

The addition is worth what it cost because of what it let the rest of the ground floor stop doing.

Services: Architecture · Interior design
Key moves: Accretions replaced by one volume, three sources of light, storage taken to the walls, window seat in the garden wall

Next project A compact rear intervention View