This new ground floor extension has rejuvenated an existing four-storey semi detached Victorian property in Highgate, allowing the house to meet the owner’s requirements and vastly improving its functionality. Two glazed sliding doors transform the house and its relationship with the garden, creating connectivity and blurring the boundaries between inside and outside. Housing a new kitchen and dining space, the zinc-clad extension complements both the existing house and its surroundings. The roof descends toward the site’s boundaries to minimise its visual impact and break down the open plan layout into different volumetric spaces. Roof lights mimic a previous extension and frame views of the sky, while flooding the extension with natural light. The design’s planted green roof not only increases the house’s thermal properties, but also reiterates the design’s focus on nature. As the roof is itself partially used for a first floor terrace, the importance of how the extension visually blends in with the surrounds when viewed from above was imperative.

Longlisted in the NLA Don’t Move, Improve! Awards 2016 - Photographer: Will Pryce