Reveal House started as a simple brief to extend a detached suburban house whilst maintaining its interwar character and street frontage.  The clients enjoy cooking and social eating but the original house had a small scullery kitchen and separate dining room.  The garden stepped up the hill and whilst mature and well planted, was not adaptable to a young family.  Whilst the house had a large frontage, its relatively shallow plan meant that it only had 3 bedrooms.  As the project brief developed it turned into a whole house refurbishment that aimed to be sustainable and adaptable as family needs changed.

The extension is the most striking of the new spaces where its form is freed from the limitations of the interwar house.  Its geometries respond to the sun path and limit overshadowing of the original main living room.  The only clue from the street that the house has been changed is the orange door in the black brick surround that pokes its head around the side of the house.  The new space locks into the corner formerly occupied by the kitchen and forms a mucky entrance, utility space and plant room for the new air source heat pump water cylinders.

A new timber-lined corridor connects the house’s light-filled main entrance to the new extension, which houses a large social kitchen and family dining space. The external walls are given an artificial depth that is carved into, forming deep window and door reveals that create generous seats or frame views to the garden.  The kitchen has been designed as a piece of furniture that defines the various parts of the room.  The ceiling of exposed joists further helps to define spaces within the open plan room that culminates in a small family snug.  

Externally, the use of dark brown, almost black brick is a stark contrast to the original house, using texture and use of brick detailing instead to provide continuity.  Care has been taken to keep the sense of an interwar house from the street, using black stained waney edge boarding to create a new gable at roof level.  The windows use a muted grey green to further connect the old house and new extension.  

The landscape strategy is also key to tying the building together.  A series of small terraces step up the level changes from the new kitchen to the upper lawn level.  Generous planting beds bring the garden down to the back of the house, creating a richer experience that breaks down the former mass of the retaining walls.

The first floor retains much of the original space planning, save for merging the bathroom and separate WC.  A new staircase creates a generous and well lit space link to the new roof level rooms.  Oversized windows look out over the garden and living roof of the extension and are a play on the original stair stained glass window that has been restored and reused in a new garden room at the back of the site.

The reduction of embodied carbon was a key part of the project from an early stage.  It was critical that we retained as much of the existing structure as possible whilst designing new elements that could be constructed with minimal amounts of steel or concrete.

The new roof to the main house is completely timber framed construction.  This was a conscious design decision as there was little difference in size between a steel or timber ridge.  Whilst the engineer was supportive of this, the main contractor had to be challenged not to revert to the ‘norm’ of using steel wherever.

The garden room extension was also carefully considered.  Extensive ground testing revealed where consolidated rock was present and the stepped design of the building responded to existing ground levels which limited the foundation level dig and need for concrete retaining elements.  The building steps up the hill, using small strip footings and separated retaining walls to limit the amount of concrete used on site.