Kieran Wardle Architects curated the extension and renovation of a Victorian house in Dulwich, south London. The new ground floor and first-floor extension was designed to create a more flexible reconfigured living and kitchen space whilst also adding a bedroom at first-floor level.

Our clients came to us with a familiar problem: their Victorian terraced house was not working as well as it could for their family. The two larger rooms at the front of the house were well proportioned and clearly defined. The back portion of the house, however, suffered from low ceiling heights, smaller rooms and had a restricted connection to the rear garden. This all lead to surprisingly dark, cramped rooms at the back of the family house. Like many people they spent a large amount of time in the kitchen and dining spaces but they were not at the same level as the rest of the house.

The challenge was to create a flexible space at the rear of the house that borrowed some of the proportions and scale of the two larger rooms, but could easily transform from a breakfast area before school, to a workspace during the day, a home-work and playing area during the late afternoon and finally as an entertaining space later on at night.

The key to all of this was the clever concealment of storage and rooms to support each of the space’s many different lives.

Kitchen cupboards merge into taller storage units, hiding appliances and toys from sight. A utility room and cloakroom were carefully placed in the centre of the house to be easily accessible from the flexible family space but to no interrupt it, or the room’s connection with the rest of the house.

The design used a mixture of concrete, marble and bespoke timber joinery internally with a slim handmade brick to create a contemporary extension that compliments the original Victorian house.

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