De Beauvoir House
DE BEAUVOIR HOUSE
Scott Architects
ARCHITECTS
Scott Architects
LOCATION
Greater London, United Kingdom
CATEGORY
Houses
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Elliott Wood
AREA
187.0 sqm
PROJECT YEAR
2013
PHOTOGRAPHS
Craig Sheppard
De Beauvoir Road is a four-bedroom Victorian terraced house that has been sensitively refurbished and boldly extended as a sculptural form that draws in light from the sky and embraces views of its garden and surrounding trees.
Set within a Hackney conservation area, original period features have been reinstated using traditional methods while a rear extension of sweeping spaces gives new life to a house that was slowly being outgrown by its family’s modern requirements.
The form of the new extension has evolved from the language of the site: its gardens, its brickwork and its neighbouring buildings.
Its curved forms are clad in solid oak boarding to add to a carefully selected palette of natural materials - limestone flooring, exposed brickwork walls and restored Baltic pine floorboards.
The interiors are expressed as a series of fluid surfaces and flowing spaces that weave through the home, leading one towards a rear garden that gently extends over the dining room as a green roof of wildflowers.
Generously lit indoor family rooms open up and connect with west-facing outdoor spaces. Contemporary forms reveal and celebrate the character of the original house, allowing vertical pools of natural light to wash over exposed brickwork and cleanly composed surfaces. Oak boarding extends through to internal spaces to add texture and visual warmth.
The original building has been fully thermally insulated and includes low energy lighting, under floor heating from a highly efficient boiler and a sloping green roof.
