A playful re-imagining of a Victorian terrace with a large rear extension. The project started as a problem solving exercise – the owner of the house was very tall and he had never been able to have a shower in the pokey outrigger bathroom, there was simply not enough ceiling height. The lower ground floor kitchen also suffered from low ceilings and was dark and uninviting. There was very little connection to the garden, surrounded by trees, which felt like a lost opportunity. The whole house needed rethinking. The solution we proposed was to extend into the generous garden at the rear and reconstruct the existing outrigger with an extra storey. We used the outrigger to relocate the staircase to the lower ground floor, moving it from the centre of the house into a double height space in the extension. This gave the house a very generous sense of height and space and allows light to flood into the kitchen and hall from high level windows. These provide glances of the surrounding tress as you descent to the dining room. The extension allows the kitchen and dining room to push further into the garden, making the most of the views and light. A strip rooflight over the kitchen wall units brings light deep into the space and washes the kitchen with sunlight during the day. Behind the kitchen, where there was no access to natural light, we tucked a utility room and shower room, with a second sitting room at the front of the house. The extension has a green sedum roof to ensure it feels like part of the garden when seen from the upper floors of the house. We used a pale white and yellow brick to complement the colour of the London stock brickwork, but maintain a contemporary aesthetic. Oak windows and sliding door add a warmth to the extension and tie in with the materials we used internally. Internally there is a palette of bold colours to define the living spaces, including an entirely yellow corridor the client has named ‘The Yolky Way’ leading from the kitchen to the front reception room, complete with hidden yellow doors. These are offset against more natural materials such as the oak batten cladding, which define the dining space and also line the back wall of the kitchen concealing the fridge door and larder units. A bespoke terrazzo counter unites the colours of the floor, oak cladding and cupboard doors and the tiled floor leads seamlessly to the outside patio, leading the eye back into the garden. A new bathroom with a generous ceiling height was placed in the reconstructed outrigger, with triple aspect windows, including a picture window at the end of the bath framing views of the trees in the garden. Upstairs we kept the traditional Victorian layout, refurbished the windows and shutters, reinstating cornice and ceiling roses to the principal rooms. At every point in the project the ergonomics of the house were considered, tall doors, very high kitchen worktops and always maximising ceiling heights, ensuring the house was more suited to its tall owner.

Medium sized open plan living room in Melbourne with white walls and medium hardwood flooring.

To dwell and establish connections with a place is a basic human necessity often combined, amongst other things, with light and is performed in association with the elements that generate it, be they natural or artificial. And in the renovation of this purpose-built first floor flat in a quiet residential street in Kennington, the use of light in its varied forms is adopted to modulate the space and create a brand new dwelling, adapted to modern living standards. From the intentionally darkened entrance lobby at the lower ground floor – as seen in Mackintosh’s Hill House – one is led to a brighter upper level where the insertion of wide pivot doors creates a flexible open plan centred around an unfinished plaster box-like pod. Kitchen and living room are connected and use a stair balustrade that doubles as a bench seat; this allows the landing to become an extension of the kitchen/dining area - rather than being merely circulation space – with a new external view towards the landscaped terrace at the rear. The attic space is converted: a modernist black box, clad in natural slate tiles and with a wide sliding window, is inserted in the rear roof slope to accommodate a bedroom and a bathroom. A new relationship can eventually be established with all new and existing exterior openings, now visible from the former landing space: traditional timber sash windows are re-introduced to replace unsightly UPVC frames, and skylights are put in to direct one’s view outwards and upwards. photo: Gianluca Maver

the deck The deck is an outdoor room with a high awning roof built over. This dramatic roof gives one the feeling of being outside under the sky and yet still sheltered from the rain. The awning roof is freestanding to allow hot summer air to escape and to simplify construction. The architect designed the kitchen as a sculpture. It is also very practical and makes the most out of economical materials.

La terraza abierta al patio de manzana.
Small mediterranean apartment balcony in Barcelona with a roof extension.

Small scandinavian home office in Nantes with white walls, a built-in desk and grey floors.

Photo of a contemporary back patio in Adelaide with concrete paving, a roof extension and a bbq area.

COM'1 DECLIC
Photo of a medium sized contemporary bathroom in Reims with medium wood cabinets, a corner shower, beige tiles, ceramic tiles, beige walls, ceramic flooring, a console sink, wooden worktops, an open shower and flat-panel cabinets.

Design ideas for a contemporary patio in Melbourne with an outdoor kitchen and a roof extension.

Remodelled en-suite in Griffith, Canberra
Inspiration for a small contemporary ensuite bathroom in Canberra - Queanbeyan with white cabinets, a double shower, a one-piece toilet, white tiles, metro tiles, white walls, porcelain flooring, a vessel sink, marble worktops, grey floors, a hinged door and flat-panel cabinets.

Design ideas for a scandinavian bedroom in Nantes with pink walls.

Small contemporary balcony in Surrey with a roof extension and feature lighting.

Our main bathroom at our #NewSpacesxMonash project is simple in design, but packs a punch on functionality and space. Storage to service three kids as they grow was imperative, so the bathroom features a massive 1800mm custom vanity by @topshelf joinery including tall cabinet. A ‘wet-area’ design encompasses both the back-to-wall bath and shower space, with a hand-held shower positioned between for ease of cleaning, especially for the kids in the bath on hair washing night! This open shower design also means less shower screens to keep clean

Twin Peaks House is a vibrant extension to a grand Edwardian homestead in Kensington. Originally built in 1913 for a wealthy family of butchers, when the surrounding landscape was pasture from horizon to horizon, the homestead endured as its acreage was carved up and subdivided into smaller terrace allotments. Our clients discovered the property decades ago during long walks around their neighbourhood, promising themselves that they would buy it should the opportunity ever arise. Many years later the opportunity did arise, and our clients made the leap. Not long after, they commissioned us to update the home for their family of five. They asked us to replace the pokey rear end of the house, shabbily renovated in the 1980s, with a generous extension that matched the scale of the original home and its voluminous garden. Our design intervention extends the massing of the original gable-roofed house towards the back garden, accommodating kids’ bedrooms, living areas downstairs and main bedroom suite tucked away upstairs gabled volume to the east earns the project its name, duplicating the main roof pitch at a smaller scale and housing dining, kitchen, laundry and informal entry. This arrangement of rooms supports our clients’ busy lifestyles with zones of communal and individual living, places to be together and places to be alone. The living area pivots around the kitchen island, positioned carefully to entice our clients' energetic teenaged boys with the aroma of cooking. A sculpted deck runs the length of the garden elevation, facing swimming pool, borrowed landscape and the sun. A first-floor hideout attached to the main bedroom floats above, vertical screening providing prospect and refuge. Neither quite indoors nor out, these spaces act as threshold between both, protected from the rain and flexibly dimensioned for either entertaining or retreat. Galvanised steel continuously wraps the exterior of the extension, distilling the decorative heritage of the original’s walls, roofs and gables into two cohesive volumes. The masculinity in this form-making is balanced by a light-filled, feminine interior. Its material palette of pale timbers and pastel shades are set against a textured white backdrop, with 2400mm high datum adding a human scale to the raked ceilings. Celebrating the tension between these design moves is a dramatic, top-lit 7m high void that slices through the centre of the house. Another type of threshold, the void bridges the old and the new, the private and the public, the formal and the informal. It acts as a clear spatial marker for each of these transitions and a living relic of the home’s long history.

This is an example of a medium sized contemporary galley open plan kitchen in Kent with flat-panel cabinets, medium wood cabinets and medium hardwood flooring.

Fine House Studios
Photo of a contemporary living room in London.

Fine House Studios
Design ideas for a contemporary kitchen in London.

Inspiration for a classic basement in London.

Contemporary living room in Other.