A Victorian terrace house in south London was expanded by the local firm Oliver Leech Architects, who added a four-meter-wide skylight in the middle that provides views of the roof of a wildflower field.
The studio, which is situated in Herne Hill’s Poet’s Corner conservation area, was entrusted with maintaining the late 19th-century building’s identity while bringing its “disconnected and dark” interiors to light.
Oliver Leech Architects extended the ground floor by adding an open living, dining, and kitchen area that joins the old building with a big skylight and a window seat that looks out onto a small courtyard, all while emphasizing natural light.
Oliver Leech, the founder, told Dezeen that “natural light is the most important theme and design tool that we think about when designing our houses as a studio.”
“Here we used the light to draw you into the house through the darker hallway and towards a huge fixed skylight in the centre of the house.”
“We saw this central skylight as the central anchor to the new house, surrounded by all the key spaces,” he stated.
The front rooms of the house still have a similar layout, but they now open into the spacious new living area, forming an axis that leads to a patio garden made of brick and concrete that is reached via full-height sliding glass doors.
A series of oak steps under the central skylight allows users to access the increased ceiling height created by the extension’s 40 centimeter sinking.
Sloping forward, this skylight offers a view of the wildflowers that have been planted on the roof of the expansion, framed by the ceiling that has been washed lime and curving around the window reveal’s borders.
A second skylight in the extension adds more natural light to the dining area and kitchen, which have deep green kitchen counters with marble tops that have veining.
“This [skylight] has been designed to introduce a slice of sunlight into the dining and kitchen spaces and offers completely different lighting conditions throughout the day,” added Leech.
“It is important to connect the house to nature and this is a small way to do this.”
There’s a sunken concrete patio, a paved brick seating area at the end of the garden, and a long window bench at the dining table with a view of a tiered brick flower bed.
Two guest bedrooms and an additional bathroom have been added to the first floor in place of the two smaller bedrooms, while the second story is home to two children’s bedrooms.
A mainly subdued color scheme of white interspersed with rich green and blue tones was used throughout to create a “calm backdrop” for the client’s belongings and artwork.
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