B i r c h H o u s e

E17, Walthamstow, London

The Client

JustAnother Architects were appointed to refurbish this newly acquired Victorian terrace by a young, entrepreneurial family.

The Original

The house sits in a prominent position in Walthamstow Village conservation area, originally built to house local workers following the extension of the Great Eastern Railway to the area, and subsequent boom in urbanization.

The Brief

The brief called to reconfigure, refurbish, and increase the living space to accommodate this growing family, with a special request to open the back of the house to the garden, make use of the redundant dark side return and add an additional shower room whilst retaining the much loved period snugg and hallway at the front of the house.

The Design

Our design comprised a wrap-around extension, creating a sizeable kitchen-dinner and open-plan living space to the back of the house, a new shower room, plenty of hidden storage and pantry and a horse shoe kitchen making the most of the private facing vista, and strengthening the relationship with the green garden.

Rooms to the front of the property, rich with original period features, were restored to their original splendour with a contrast to contemporary build with it’s full height doors, exposed beams and vertical slats toward the rear.

The Materials

Materials were carefully selected to coexist with the existing period property. Working closely with planners we used London stock bricks to match the existing but played with the façade; an off-pivot high-performance metal, jet-black window and door, concrete cantilevered window seat and the dark zinc roof elevates an otherwise standard material.

Internally, the addition of birch ply and oak flooring softens the contemporary hardness of the clean palette. Full height hidden pocket doors were introduced to separate the new living quarters from the main entrance hall of the house and hide the pantry and utility area as well as ease the transition between old and new.

In the client’s words…

“We worked with Greg for our ground floor extension project in Walthamstow. He took the time to really get to know us and the needs of our little family, and helped us design a space which is both exactly suited to us but also feels unique and architectural and different to every other Victorian terrace layout that you see. Two years on we’re still delighted with the results, and if anything it just keeps getting better and better as we settle more into it.”

- Edd