“Move or improve”? Now that you have found the perfect location for your family home, you might find that your family needs a different home. What do you do?

 

This is a common dilemma among homeowners. The family grows, or shrinks, as children grow up and leave home. Needs change and the house you moved into is no longer suitable.

 

This project addresses this issue. The client has a young family, works partly from home and loves hosting extended family. The existing property is located in a very good neighbourhood, where there is considerable precedent for the kind of amplification that would make the existing house suitable for the client’s new needs. The client also wanted a facelift for the property, where the aspect of the building is altered to bring it closer to the client’s taste.

 

My proposal almost doubled the habitable area with a minimal impact on the bulk of the street frontage. This was achieved through extending the existing roof plane in the front of the house, raising the ridge height only slightly. The rear, or garden, front underwent more alterations affording the client the opportunity to open this frontage completely towards the garden, unlike what the current layout offers.

 

The centrepiece of the proposal is a triple volume lobby space. This forms the principle linking space between the living spaces on the ground floor, the private and sleeping spaces on the first floor and the study/guest space on the loft level. On entering the front door one immediately finds oneself in this lofty space with a clear view to a roof light, high up, allowing morning sun into the space.