Set back from the road on a quiet village lane, this seemed the perfect location for our client's family home. The large garden backed onto their parents’ property, so when it came on the market, they snapped it up. The house that stood on the site however was not to their taste. A red brick neo-Georgian suburban development property, the house had the typical limitations associated with this type of developer approach. Low ceilings, conventional layout with small rooms and small windows, made the house feel cramped and lacking in flow and natural daylight. We explored various options with the client, including knocking the property down and building a completely new structure. However, this felt wasteful and unnecessary. Working closely with the family to understand the way they lived, we settled upon an adaptive approach that sought to enhance the existing structure, incorporating and extending it to create a home that would look, feel and function completely differently to its previous form.