Architect: Sam Tisdall
About Architect
Often in the natural world and occasionally in the built environment, you come across places that have a certain harmony and have the capacity to inspire and lift your mood. My aim is to try to make such places and to remember the potential that architecture has to improve people’s daily lives. This ambition is easily lost beneath the challenges everyone faces when taking on a project.
Designing and building are not simple. It is subject to a whole range of forces and involves input from a wide variety of people with different skills and concerns. The architect’s role is to navigate this journey and empower clients through the process. It requires a pragmatic and flexible approach, backed up by technical knowledge and an unwavering commitment to the quality of the finished building.
I am always looking for clients, consultants, contractors, and other craftsmen, with shared values, commitment, and enthusiasm for this creative process. I continue to learn from past projects and collaborations as well as look at each new project with fresh eyes. My aim is to deliver the best outcome for each of my clients whilst remaining true to my design ethos and values.
The brief was to provide more comfortable and well-designed family spaces, by converting an existing cellar and replanning and extending the kitchen and dining space. This was originally a single room that was too small to comfortably fit both functions. The existing wedge-shaped garden meant that there was quite a lot of space to the side of the house.
This provided an opportunity to create a new pavilion-type dining space that did not extend to the boundary. The new room extends out to the side of the kitchen and forms a semi-enclosed south-facing courtyard space. With two walls glazed, the extension maintains views between the new courtyard and the garden.
In the day this room is open and light-filled, with the garden to one side and the courtyard to the other, but in darkness, it feels more enclosed; An intimate warmly lit space sitting within the garden. The extension was carefully detailed with a timber ceiling and exposed timber joists spanning onto the end wall of exposed brick.
An in situ concrete shelf was cast into the brick wall as a focal point at the end of the dining table. The existing kitchen was replanned with a frameless slot window offering a view of the new courtyard space, and a bench seat in the retained bay window. Other plan alterations rationalized the route from the front door through to the kitchen and provided space for a new staircase down to the basement.
This was excavated to create a proper head height, tanked and insulated, and fully integrated into the house. Planning was gained on appeal for a window facing the street as well as a light well to the side. This means the main basement room has two sources of daylight and is light-filled and comfortable.
This has a polished concrete floor and built-in furniture and is used as a multi-purpose family room for homework and TV. The rest of the basement provides space for a utility room and much-valued storage space.
