House in Wandsworth _2013 Wandsworth, London The existing house had a typical problem of a Victorian terraced house for today’s lifestyle – what used to be store room and toilet often become a dark and dingy kitchen with a poor relationship to the garden. The design brief was to expand the ground-floor kitchen and dining area outwards and rearwards, and in the process bring as much light into the space as possible. The project uses the change of levels in the house to define two spaces within the plan; the kitchen which is naturally lit through triple glazed side light, and a social space which connects to the garden via fully openable bi-fold doors and a floor finish which goes from inside to outside. The elevation to the garden re-uses all bricks harvested from the demolished walls, reducing the amount of material we had to throw away form site. Victorian houses often have dark and dingy kitchens with a poor connection to the garden. This is a project of connecting the two again. One of the key parts of this project was that the client decided to remain in the house all the time when the build was in progress – five months. To make this feasible, temporary walls were built to completely isolate the building site from the clean side of the house. This arrangement worked well - even when the existing house was fully re-supported off three cranked new steel beams - life upstairs proceeded as normal. The original design concept was developed over many meetings with the client. This collaborative approach to design is important to us – our clients understand how their houses work, and know what they want. We like to listen and interpret their ideas back to them, often finding new ideas taking shape out of lively conversations.