Forest House
AOC’s wraparound extension of raw, generous spaces complements the refined, colourful rooms of a Victorian semi to support family life.
Forest House is the extension and transformation of a semi-detached Victorian house on a tree-lined street in Highams Park, north-east London. After four years in the house the family of five wanted to retain the comfortable intimacy of the well-proportioned rooms but introduce the spatial generosity and experiential joy that they experience in the nearby Epping Forest.
A single storey garage was removed and a set of new connected spaces wrapped around the side and rear of the house. A triple height space sits at the heart of the home, pushing out into a garden room, overlooked by a mezzanine studio, with an attic room perched above.
The stacked floors of the wraparound extension support family life by providing different spatial characters for different uses within one shared space. Enclosed by bomb-damaged brick walls and exposed blockwork the new living spaces have an external quality. Natural light from all angles bathes the interior in unexpected ways. Generous openings frame the garden, forest and sky, enhancing the connection with the outdoors. A large sliding window, above a douglas fir bench, runs the width of the extension allowing the interior to be opened up to the fragrant wild garden. Tall verbena and wildflowers brush against the windows and rainwater runs into a collecting fountain.
The front of the house responds to the existing house’s brick facade with an inverted palette of white bricks and red pre-cast concrete lintels. The rear of the house, with long views over neighbouring gardens to the Forest, is clad in woven hazel, its provisional nature seeming to invite the wild in. A concrete plinth, cast against the cladding to extend its texture, provides a robust base and bench.
The heavy fabric of the original house has been retained to minimise the embodied energy, with only recent lightweight additions removed. Wrapping the rear and unattached side of the house significantly improves its thermal performance and exposing the external wall internally ensures its thermal mass is effectively used. The new roof and existing dormer are super-insulated to provide a warm hat to the home. Underfloor heating in the extension’s polished concrete floor has proved sufficient to keep the use of radiators in the upper floors to a minimum.
Raw, economical materials heighten the haptic delights of refined bespoke elements. Timbers are used as surface linings inside and out, with woven hazel, douglas fir, spruce ply and cork bark chosen for their colour, associations and sensory delight. An array of greens, painted and mineral, create the busy calm of the forest. The interlocking volumes are tethered by a stacked totem - fridge, wine rack, bowed balustrade - creating a distinct, benign figure around which the family’s life evolves.
