‘The Lantern’ project involved the complete basement, ground and first floor extension and refurbishment of a Locally Listed Residential Building in South West London. The Client asked us to transform the existing building into a series of spaces that had a strong reference to Eastern Design influences whilst manipulating daylight and threshold conditions. A feature American Black Walnut staircase wraps itself up through the building, connecting the habitable spaces through its tree like presence. Half landings, internal openings and unusual apertures encourage the notion of creating internal courtyards of living spaces that are all strongly connected to one another. At the top of the house sits a roof top study for the client, over-looking the four storey central staircase. At the bottom of the staircase the tree like form wraps itself onto the ceiling of the basement rooms as the roots of the staircase in plywood ribbons, thus connecting this vertical building thematically as well as spatially. The planning process was complex for this building and led to months of negotiations with the local planning department eventually agreeing with a limit in place to the height of the extension. The brick cladding pays respect to the existing building, whilst be separated away from the historic fabric of the building by a glass slice. The existing building fabric has been fully insulated and taped to create an air tight building. All the joinery for the project was designed, fabricated and installed by Fraher Architect’s sister company (Fraher and Co). Fraher Architects provided a full RIBA service.