Architect: Sam Tisdall
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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.
This project was the last stage of various alterations to our West London terraced house. This included two substantial bits of work; A new basement and then finally a new rear extension which is shown here. A condition of the basement work required by the local authority was to address historic contaminated land issues in the rear garden.
This meant excavating and replacing topsoil, and whilst the added cost was unwelcome, it also provided an opportunity to think about the design of the garden and rear extension as one.
Whilst these are ‘typical’ projects there are normally a few key design decisions which have a significant affect on the final outcome of the project:
What is the relationship between the house and the garden?
What is the relationship between the extension and the rear reception room and how do you get light into this often landlocked room?
How does the atmosphere of the new space relate to the rest of the house?
In this case, we decide to use a few simple moves. Access to the garden is via a large square pivot door which had to be craned over the terrace into place. This is a joy to use and can open wide as well as create a simple framed view when closed.
A sofa alongside has become a favorite place to sit. There is a smaller square window alongside, and a large square roof light above. On the first floor, a further large square projecting window to the box bedroom has a cill that folds out to create a desk. This transforms this small room into a study.
Externally the doors and windows are stained black, and this color extends outside to the timber cladding of the extension, and the herringbone paving and burnt oak setts in the garden. Where the extension hits the house structural glazing above the kitchen extends up to enclose the existing sash window.
This acts as a hatch to the living room, open for passing tea from the kitchen, but closed when watching TV or doing work. A change in level between the extension and house means that the retained window cill is at about head height in the kitchen and acts as a shelf. Whilst from the rear reception room there is a comfortable view, both out of the roof light as well as down to the kitchen.
Materials are natural, with clay plaster walls, ash floors, birch ply kitchen, and an oiled plywood ceiling with softwood joists. Back-to-back channels and a column painted pea green support the retained first floor above. The column sits naturally between the kitchen and dining space which nestles under a sloping section of the roof. An island supported on scaffolding is on wheels so it can move out of the way if needed.