This project extends one of four private houses, built in the 1960’s, in Sheffield, by Professor Peter Smith, who is still a neighbour. The houses occupy a mature collective garden within a wooded dell.

The project redefines the house’s relationship with this landscape, extending and placing its principal spaces, in order that they overlook and engage with it and with each other. A patio extends out from the living space, through the new sliding doors of the garden elevation. In time, this will be enclosed by planting to create a semi private garden room within the larger communal grounds.

 

The form of the project emerged from a consideration of the tectonic relationships established between the various elements of the existing house. In the main these relationships, such as the exposed in-situ concrete lintels revealed on the brick elevations, are immediately apparent throughout the building. The exception is the gutter, which is concealed behind a deep and prominently projecting white painted fascia, capping the building and characterising the house in relation to its neighbours.

The walls of the extension extend the plane of this fascia, bringing it to ground as a taut, immaterial surface, stretched against the brick mass of the original and floating above the new brick plinth and brick patio of the garden room. They also respond to its material condition, constructed as a balloon frame with an externally insulated render finish.