#extension

Etta House began with a family who wanted to change how their home felt and was lived in - by adding more space, more light and more clarity. The result is a ground floor side and rear extension that transforms a tired Victorian property in Balham that was fragmented, dark and disconnected from the garden, into a generous, contemporary living environment that is open, coherent and filled with natural light - without losing sight of the character of the original building.  Chris Snook Rather than imposing an ideology on the site, Stylus Architects allowed the site to generate the architecture. A wedge-shaped geometry defines the plot, and every wall, every junction and every view originates from those existing geometries. The rear... More

This project involved the renovation and partial vertical extension of a former 1920s workers’ townhouse and its garage, in order to accommodate a family. For the design phase, we teamed up with the interior architecture studio SHK. Amaury Laparra Amaury Laparra The works focused on rehabilitating an unsanitary 1920s house and a series of later extensions. The existing garage was incorporated into the heated floor area of the home, with the parking space relocated outdoors. Part of the garage was raised to create an additional bedroom on the first floor. The project is structured in two distinct parts: on the one hand, a ground floor clad in brick, housing the shared spaces of the house (study, kitchen, living room, laundry... More

 This project involved extending a contemporary townhouse to make space for two children. The original house was built in 2013–2014, based on designs by architect Clément Bacle. Guillaume Jouet A turquoise-blue aluminium conservatory creates a breathing space between the newly built bedroom and the original living room. This in-between volume provides a welcome buffer, setting the children slightly apart from the shared family spaces while giving them an extra room for a desk, an additional bed, or a play area. Fully glazed onto the garden, the conservatory feels warm and inviting, blurring the boundary between indoors and outdoors. The floor tiles, floral wallpaper, indoor plants, blue-green joinery, and the reflect... More

Can concrete appear as thin as paper and defy gravity?A cantilevered, ultra-thin concrete roof challenges gravity—not as an artificially generated image that ignores physical laws, but as a real built structure in an ordinary garden. With this 53-square-meter garden pavilion, FACE and DUCON bring ultra-high-performance concrete from the lab into practice, allowing it to float delicately. An 11 by 5 meter, just 90 millimeter thick roof slab hovers over a long table with an integrated fire pit. Along the line of maximum bending moment, a circular oculus frames the sky—and on clear nights, outlines Orion's Belt. The span is vast, the gesture minimal, the message clear: Concrete can be lightweight. White steel cantilevers lift the s... More

Perry Vale House is a bold and imaginative reinvention of a semi-detached Edwardian home in Forest Hill, south east London. Designed by Wellstudio Architecture for a young family, this striking extension breaks away from generic rear-addition typologies to create something deeply personal, sculptural, and wellness-led.  Chris Snook Rooted in a contemporary reinterpretation of the Arts & Crafts movement, the design fuses traditional craftsmanship with an expressive modern language of arches, curves and natural light. The result is a space that feels serene, soulful, and seamlessly connected to the home’s heritage and the lives of the people within it. Chris Snook Built in 1901 by celebrated local builder Ted Christ... More

A refined seasonal relationship of home to garden now exploits the amazing elevated park views and wonderful westerly sunlight. The ground floor is reconfigured and extended to provide a series of ‘broken-plan’ family spaces whose architecture is defined with a series of conceptually simple, but technically complex, robust columns and beams. Stale Eriksen Stale Eriksen Stale Eriksen Stale Eriksen Stale Eriksen Three sequential spaces are created, a back kitchen and garden boot room, a kitchen and dining zone, and a living space, all connected to a 5m deep terrace through a variety of glazed openings, shaded by the fair-faced concrete full-width lintel above.  Internal and external spaces have been... More

The extension project of the Fondation Maeght enlarges the exhibition spaces by 580 m², respecting the original architecture of Josep Lluís. Sert. A nearly invisible intervention at first glance, which reveals itself as visitors progress along the journey. It consists of two new main volumes and two galleries, nestled beneath part of the foundation’s current floors, inserted into the thickness of the existing building’s stone base. Aquanaute The large hall, built under the Giacometti Courtyard, provides a space of 390 m² (13.5 m wide by 29 m long), free of any visible structure. This layout aims to achieve great flexibility for temporary exhibitions, permanent collection displays, concerts,screenings, or d... More

The enlargement of  cemetery in Valfabbrica, an ancient city of medieval origin located in Umbria, Italy, is a project system closes towards the exterior and opens towards the interior of the existing complex, mediating the tombs with a loggia punctuated by large diameter columns, so as to make them perceived as a spatial device capable of functioning as a threshold that defines the sacredness of space. Alessandra Chemollo Alessandra Chemollo Alessandra Chemollo At the center of the system there is a space of relationship between the outside and the inside, a sort of chapel of the sacred landscape where you can pause, meditate and become aware of the archaic values of nature. In this building the natural light  bec... More

The new addition was added to create new living spaces while maintaining openness and connection to the existing garden. The design maintains a minimal foot print, shaping the indoor space in relation to the surrounding landscape. The design massing is designed to keep the views from the existing house open to the garden and natural light. New York Studio Co., Ltd. New York Studio With the new extension, a courtyard is formed with the pool as the new focal point connecting the two structures. The design language is understated to compliment the existing house. The new addition becomes a minimal backdrop along with the lush landscape. New York Studio Co., Ltd. New York Studio Co., Ltd. New York Studio Co., Ltd. The... More

It was a traditional town house, like so many others on the Maresme coast. It is a row house, with the main facade aligned to the street, dividing walls of mud and stone and a back patio. Despite of this, the house had two remarkable peculiarities. First, it incorporated two typological units on the same property. That is: instead of having a single bay of between 4 and 5 meters, as usual, it had two bays as part of it. Second, the ground level of the back patio of the house was about 3 meters above the ground level of the main access. Both features had great potential but were paradoxically limiting as well. José Hevia José Hevia In the first case because the relationship between the two entities was very poor. In... More

It is a row house built in the early 90s. It is located in Sant Pere de Ribes, a village 50 kilometers south of Barcelona. It was large but dense, as it corresponds to the type of middle-class housing of the time. It was not a dark house, but it was in semi-darkness. To optimize the number of floors, the slabs leave a very tight clear height of just 255cm. There are four floors: one with a parking area (at street level), a ground floor (at the level of a rear public garden), a first floor and an attic. The house is well located, in the upper part of the village.Instead of entering the house from the street level, opening a gate, climbing the flight of exterior stairs leading to the terrace and then crossing an opaque door, the new proposal... More

The house originates from 1934 and was relatively untouched. The goal was to make it a lot more energy efficient and quite a bit larger. The old house did have a lot of character and details we wanted to keep. With the new extension we wanted to merge a completely different style and atmosphere with this 1930’s ambiance; the secure and warmth atmosphere of the old part combined with the open and transparent feel of a modern home. The floor of the open kitchen diner in the new extension is placed two steps lower than the living room in the older part. Looking from the backyard you can’t really see the classic front of the house. Yet from the street you can hardly see the modern extension in the back. And yet on the inside the 2 m... More

Exposed wooden beams outlining triangular shapes, large bay windows, a new open and bright volume that brings the house closer to the garden. Francesca De Marchi Francesca De Marchi The living room will remain in the main house; the new space will host a small home cinema room and a large co-working table for the whole family enjoying a beautiful view of the Marne river. Francesca De Marchi The extension will be linked to the garden by a wide white concrete staircase bordered by a small swimming pool equipped with a counter-current swimming system (and a clever winter heating system). Francesca De Marchi Francesca De Marchi The large perforated metal sheet triangle facing west has its usefulness as a sunscreen &n... More

Here, in Aÿ-Champagne, a short distance from Epernay in France Grand-Est region the notions of soil and terroir take on a greater meaning, magnified by a topography whose relief is the vineyard, listed as UNESCO world heritage site since 2015. Boegly+Grazia Faced with the mesmerising spectacle of the slopes, we made this landscape heritage fit in the project for the sensory interpretation centre for Champagne wines, thought by the CCVGM. We also took the architectural decision not to build up on the roof of the former Maison Pommery pressing centre, but to blend the extension into the landscape. The quality of the original building dating from 1902 and its location allowed a sensitive project approach, by recovering and restoring... More