Vanessa Anderson, age 62, lives in a Edwardian terrace house in London that dates from 1910. Like many who live in such properties, Vanessa wants to open up the ground-floor space to create an open-plan layout, and add an extension. Her budget is £120,000.The Problem

The main problem with the original ground floor layout of many Edwardian homes is that there are too many individual, small rooms and often not enough space to meet the requirements of a 21st century home. As you come in through the front door and enter the hallway there is a small living room immediately to your right. The main feature in this space is the beautiful bay window at the front of the house. Alongside the living room, at the back of the house, is a formal dining room that opens onto the garden and next to the dining room is an incredibly small and dark kitchen. Like many Edwardian homes, off the kitchen, there is what architect’s call a service block; a small lean-to extension that contains most of the drainage for the house with a ground floor toilet and utility room.

Although for most of the time Vanessa lives alone, she is a very sociable character. As well as having 2 adult children who often come home to stay, she also has many friends who come to visit from overseas and can stay for up to 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Small, individual rooms do not suit such a sociable person who loves to entertain and have dinner parties.

The Brief

Vanessa’s design brief is to create as much additional space as possible by proposing a new extension onto the back of the building to have a large new kitchen and dining area. But, I feel it even more important to look at completely rearranging the existing layout to create a greater sense of space from the moment you walk into the front door. By removing internal walls and opening the space up you can make a small house seem much larger and it also helps if you can introduce more natural light. Another important part of the brief was to provide a study/work area on the ground floor as she worked from home. Although the budget of £120,000 is a substantial amount of money, this can soon disappear when you intend to make so many expensive structural changes, build a large extension and maintain high quality finishes throughout the new design (one of Vanessa’s requirements was to have an expensive, hand-made kitchen!). Therefore, it is critical that the plan is efficient. What I mean by an efficient plan is that it saves money if all of the ‘service rooms’ (those that need a lot of water, electrics and drainage such as kitchens, bathrooms, toilets and utility rooms) are located closely together.

The Solution

The solution is to build the extension and create an open plan space from the front to the back of the house. But making a successful open-plan space work properly takes a lot more than just knocking down a few walls. I spend an enormous amount of time designing each ‘space’ (i.e. the study, the kitchen, the living room), as a ‘zone’ and making sure that those zones are practical, functional and link well together with the adjacent ‘zone’ to create a coherent layout. In Vanessa’s case there are 7 zones on the ground floor.

1. The Entrance Hall

This is no longer an enclosed space as it opens up onto the living areas. It important in the scheme that as soon as you open the front door you get a view all the way through the house and out to the garden at the rear.

2. The Private Study

A beautiful space as the desk position sits in the existing bay window. We provided shutters to the lower half of the bay window for privacy from the street. The study can be closed off from the adjacent living spaces by pulling out sliding/folding doors, but can be left open for most of the time when Vanessa is working home alone.

3. The Formal Lounge Area

The focus of this area is the new open fire. This is a place where Vanessa can sit with friends and talk. Formal sofas and chairs with lamps either side on small tables are arranged around the hearth. Power to these lamps had to be provided using floor sockets to avoid wires having to run across the floor from wall sockets.

4. The Informal Lounge Area

The focus of this area is the plasma TV. Lounge chairs and footstools are used in this area, rather than sofas, to create a more informal feel.

5. The new Breakfast + Dining Area

The new, single-storey extension provides a much bigger dining area that opens directly out onto the garden. The large glass doors provide so much more natural light and it was important that this area faced east to make the most of the morning sunrise at breakfast time.

6. The Kitchen Area

The new kitchen is alongside the dining area and has a glass roof over the top (dotted on the plan) to provide a huge amount of natural top-light. A large corner-glass window gives views from the kitchen onto the garden.

7. Utility Room and Toilet

To make the plan incredibly efficient, I have designed the utility room and toilet alongside the kitchen. All of the service runs for water, electric and drainage are in the same area of the plan. All of the internal drainage collects at one single point and exits via the side passageway.

Under floor heating was used throughout the entire space, which means all wall space could be used for important integrated storage and picture hanging rather than being wasted using wall-mount radiators.
The combination of a new heating system, an energy efficient boiler, new double-glazed sliding sash windows and the fact we dry-lined and insulated every single internal wall, floor and the extension roof means this is one of the most energy efficient Edwardian homes in London, while the new internal spaces work like a dream!