Project: 3-4 Bedroom new build house in Bushey, situated in a break in a Victorian terrace, located deep into the rear of the site.
Value: £450,000
Client: Private
Status: Complete

This is a project for a 3 bedroom new build house, set deep within a suburban residential area, typified by Victorian terrace dwellings. The site was previously occupied by the Marguerite Frobisher Arts Studio, a listed ‘tin shed' building which was relocated to the local Bushey Museum grounds and funded by Lottery Grant and local fund raising activity. 

The new house was positioned directly onto the footprint of the old arts studio, intended to ensure that historical associations between the site and its context were not lost following the build. In turn this enabled us to conceive the house as a pavilion rather an end of terrace, due to its freer relationship away from the street frontage. In turn, the building form is generated out of careful analysis of local massing as well maintaining privacy between the new building and neighbouring properties. 

Externally, the building is wrapped in a homogenous brick skin, which wraps up from the landscape, and includes the small brick garage facing the street and the replaces boundary wall facing the street. This relationship of building to street retains those historic associations described, and similarly allows for a contemporary sculptural form to sit comfortably within its Victorian context.

A number of key moves have been used to ensure the internal spaces take full advantage of the site and the aspect. The ground floor living space is dropped into the ground plane by 600mm, creating a larger living volume. This act, also conceals the key habitable space from neighbouring views, and is supported by dropped terraces from and back extending the landscape through the living spaces, and increasing the penetration of light and amenity.

A further move, cranks the section in plan and section in order to reduce its mass and bulk when seen from neighbouring properties, and in turn prevent direct over looking between properties due to the more unusual location of the building.

Internally, the palette is simple and seen as an extension of the landscape with terracotta tiles through the raised ground plane, whilst elsewhere oak flooring completes the scheme, which responds to the decked treatment of the dropped terraces.