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Clapham House
Clapham / London
Completed 2024
Conservation Area: Borough Council of Lambeth
Hawksmoor Construction Ltd: Build Partner
Our clients approached us to sensitively refurbish and extend their late Victorian terraced home in Clapham, seeking to create a more generous and efficient family space while significantly improving the environmental performance of the building.
The Brief
The original rear extension—a poorly constructed glass infill—was cramped and prone to overheating. Our brief was to replace this with a wider, more usable kitchen, dining, and entertaining space that maximises natural light and opens fully onto the garden. At the same time, we were tasked with rethinking the environmental footprint of the entire house.
Traditional Victorian construction is known for thermal inefficiencies, and we addressed this by switching the home’s energy supply from gas to electric: (a new air source heat pump), and roof-mounted photovoltaic panels. Internal insulation was added to all external walls, and all glazing was upgraded to high-performance double glazing—collectively transforming the house’s thermal comfort and reducing its operational carbon footprint.
The Design
In reconfiguring the rear of the house, we retained the natural light and openness the clients valued, whilst removing the original solid outrigger walls to allow for a more unified and functional layout. Due to the generous width of the property, we avoided a monolithic rear façade by breaking the new volume into distinct material expressions.
A brick ‘arm’ of the extension folds back towards the original house, housing the kitchen with a large sliding window overlooking the garden. Adjacent to it, a lighter-weight render and glass volume replaces the failing infill extension. The junction between these two new volumes forms a carefully crafted corner window seat, which not only softens the geometry of the rear elevation but also offers diagonal views into the garden and frames the landscape from the moment you enter the house through the front door.
