Transforming a mundane 20-year-old house into a modern Edwardian villa

Can you describe the project?

The project is the refurbishment of detached house near Wimbledon Common, built in the early 2000s, comprising a new facade, entrance porch, a small two-storey side extension, rear infill and complete interior remodel. The context is the area’s Edwardian detached and semi-detached villas, many of great formal invention. The big idea was to transform a fairly mundane house made from low-budget materials into a modern version of an Edwardian Villa.

Who is the project for and what was the brief? 

The house is for a couple, one of whom is a transport planner while the other works in technology. Their brief was fairly open and they were looking for suggestions. The main issues with the existing house were the entirely open-plan ground floor layout, its hard-to-find front door and the building’s appearance from the street. It was not an old building but the acrylic render had discoloured, and the timber cladding panels had dropped off. While the front of the house faces a shared parking area and busy road, the rear has a walled private garden and long uninterrupted views from the first floor, so a key move was to reorientate the main spaces of the house to the rear.

Were there any significant factors that influenced the design?

The house sits adjacent to and was built in the former garden of a listed 1910 house. The planners wanted the new facade to relate to the materials of this ‘disappeared’ house. 

Explain the external treatment of the project

We built new front and (part) side facades, 200mm in front of the existing one, retaining the old one behind, enabling us to increase the insulation from 100mm to 300mm. We also used this to give depth to the facade, using the arched window’s stepped frame. With the existing home’s slightly squat profile, it became a facade composition exercise, with many options drawn and modelled.

How have the interiors been designed? 

There is a double-height hallway at the centre of the house, from which rooms are orientated to the north or the south according to their use – social to the south and private to the north. The layout is based on orientation, daylight, sociability, and privacy. The main living space is open plan but there are separate spaces for music and watching TV, along with a working-from-home ‘library’ which is located like an ante-room off the hallway.

What was your approach to sustainability?

The idea here was a total transformation while retaining as much of the existing fabric as possible. The barn-like construction of the existing house, with few internal structural walls, meant it was easy to alter. Where we built new facades, we kept the old ones behind, punching holes through to suit. Insulation was upgraded and windows were replaced with triple-glazed units. Not all the elements were possible to retain. The flat roof had to be replaced while the technical challenges of rezoning an existing underfloor heating layout proved too difficult.

What was the main challenge of the project?

Taking an awkward long, boxy building with windows only in the front and back, and turning into into a country house in miniature.

What is your favourite detail? 

The hallway where the bridge with the semicircular promontory crosses the space.

Is there a lesson from this project that might be applied elsewhere?

That you can build what most people think is a completely new house from the bones of something existing.

Christian Ducker is a director of Gundry + Ducker

Find more house extensions and renovations

Key data: 
Total contract cost £612,000
Area of extension 200m²
Cost per m² approx £3,000