Pretoria Avenue

Situated in the London borough of Walthamstow, Pretoria Avenue is a collection of handsome Victorian terraced houses typical of the area. The client came to us with a desire to remodel the ground floor and extend the existing kitchen. The existing house had an unflattering 2 storey outrigger with low head heights. This made the existing kitchen and dining area, located in the ground floor of the outrigger, feel cramped and quite dark. With a clear focus of maximising natural daylighting we looked to create a new side extension that would help to tackle these issues and turn the ground floor into something that felt open and bright. The design process incorporated a strong desire to bring in a lot of natural daylight without making the extension simply feel like a glass box. We looked to create a new intervention that balanced this carefully through the use of large openings on the roof and shuttered openings on the rear elevation. New rooflights are presented over exposed beams that form the roof to the side extension. The beams on display help to provide a necessary architectural relief and break up the large expanse of glazing. Timber shutters on the rear elevation provide an adjustable form of managing the daylight through the year. In winter the shutters being opened can help to bring in further light and in the summer it can be used to provide shade. The materiality of the project was also carefully considered to provide a balanced level of man made and natural materials. Concrete floors, worktops and beams are weighed against a measured use of warm toned timber both inside and out.