The homes on the desirable and leafy Dulwich housing estate are almost impossible to extend and Helena Rivera’s problem house was no different.
The squat, two-storey brick home — half-red-brick half-rendered in white timber — had a pokey kitchen stuck at the front, a loft too shallow to convert and sits in a conservation area. This means planning restrictions are rigid and the neighbours — foxes, squirrels, bees and bats — are resistant to change.
But with two growing teenage boys (Otto, 15, and Teo, 14), Helena and her husband, Hernando, had to magic up a fourth bedroom from somewhere while also restoring the run-down property to its former 1960s glory and creating a green oasis in the middle of London.
“Since our children had become teenagers, we had started to feel the need for additional space. What we really wanted was a more social kitchen which we could all use together and a spare fourth bedroom for visitors,” says architect Helena, who runs the practice A Small Studio and has just scooped the Urban Oasis Award at this year’s New London Architecture’s Don’t Move, Improve! awards.
“There were many restrictions on what could be done so the design had to be inventive to achieve the needs of our family,” she adds.
One step at a time
After bombs ravaged much of south London in the Second World War, 2,000 new homes were built forming the Dulwich Housing Estate, comprising rows of terraced houses punctuated with gardens and trees which have now matured. The area sits between Crystal Palace and Norwood Park, close to Gipsy Hill railway station (in Zone 3). “There are 30 prototypes of these particular homes and none of them have ever been increased to add a fourth bedroom due to spatial constraints,” Helena explains.
With a complicated list of clients — the long-time four-legged and winged residents, and her football-mad sons — she had her work cut out from the moment they moved in back in 2016. “I don’t think the property had seen a fresh coat of paint since it was built more than 70 years ago,” she says.
But it had an asking price of £860,000 so Helena and Hernando — who had moved from a Victorian home, also in West Dulwich — could not afford to do any major work at first.
The first phase was to make it pleasant to live in. Helena stripped the carpet and exposed the original wooden parquet flooring, running cork strips around the edges and removing the old metal radiators. “Just removing the radiators made the place feel bigger,” Helena says. She added a skirting board heating system instead. “This technique can be used when you can’t rip up the floorboards to add underfloor heating. It tends to be used in hospitals too because the hot air radiates, not circulates, which is more hygienic and you don’t get a build up for dirt and dust behind the radiator,” she says.
At this point she added screens made of slats of American walnut and brass, like vertical solid blinds, to separate the different spaces and added shelving, as well as redecorating the entire house in crisp white.
Reversing the floor plan
Five years later they began their ambitious project in earnest, moving the rooms around to extend and create a fourth bedroom, but adhering to planning restrictions that make it impossible to go up and difficult to go out.
The boys wanted room for bunk beds and sleepovers and room to play football in the garden so they started by space mapping the downstairs and looking at where, as a family, they spent most of their time. “We all came up with our own criteria or list of demands,” she adds. Unsurprisingly, it was the kitchen where they spent 80 per cent of their time. This was a small, dark, enclosed room at the front of the house next to the bin store and entrance. “It was shut off from the sociable spaces” Helena says. “Yet at the back of the house there was this mature garden and woodland that we wanted to connect with.”
This was an unprecedented move on her street. In all the other homes, the utilities and plumbing were at the front of the property.
A kitchen in the woods
Helen’s design was sensitive to the materials used on the Dulwich Estate and the immediate environment. Her plans showed a small rectangular extension subtly sliding into the garden without dominating it, and she was therefore given the green light to create her “kitchen in the woods”, as she calls it, while the old kitchen was transformed into a bigger bedroom at the front and side.
The kitchen floor is deliberately flush with the patio and the outdoor cooking and barbecue area. The new inside tiles were cut to the exact dimensions of the old patio tiles for a seamless transition, with pocket doors that entirely disappear. “Effectively we have doubled the size of the kitchen,” she says, “and we love to cook and listen to music out there.” In fact, they have added 182sq ft to the whole house.
A dual aspect window wall wraps around the back of the kitchen, showing off as much of the garden as possible, with a slim column holding up the glazed corner.
Adding value
- Four-bedroom house in 2016: £860,000
- Estimated price today: £1.2 million
- Four-bedroom house in 2016: £860,000
- Estimated price today: £1.2 million
In the living room is a bay window looking on to the patio area with a window seat-cum-day bed, again to save space when a guest stays over.
An oak baton ceiling reflects the wilderness but is also a nod to 1960s interior fashion, staying true to its mid-century charm.
Above the cooking area is a circular and deep light well illuminating the room and with natural light bouncing off the ink-blue cabinetry. The cupboards were the original Boffi kitchen that has been repurposed. “We almost feel that the leafy canopy is coming through the sky light,” Helena says.
Horizontal and angled white strip cladding picks out the new extension from the existing building. On the inside, the house now pops with colour. As well as the bright blue in the kitchen, a teal wall marks the dining area and there’s a warm and welcoming yellow front door.
Space for wildlife…and teenage boys
To Helena and Hernando (and the planners) it was important to minimise disruption to the natural habitats within the garden. They used trench fill foundations rather than pouring concrete into vast areas underground to underpin the extension.
This newer method is like “acupuncture into the ground”, Helena says, consisting of shallow, narrow vertical trenches.
They also blocked off two thirds of the garden to protect it from clay and brick dust. Rather than running gas pipes into the back of the house through the garden, the family switched to all-electric appliances.
The green roof is covered in a 2cm-thick blanket of sedum and yellow flowers to attract bees but also to act as insulation, keeping the kitchen warm in winter and cool in summer.
And then there’s the strategically placed bat bricks in the walls to allow them to nest safe from predators such as cats, but without impacting the integrity of the masonry.
Lighting at the back of the house is low wattage spike lights to keep the garden dim for nocturnal activity.
Although the boys don’t have a football pitch in the back garden, there is designated parkland nearby where they can play.
A bat has moved into one of the bat bricks and the fox has had cubs that play among the fruit trees and the wildflowers in the centre of the garden. Helena and the boys keep a pair of binoculars on the window sill in the kitchen to watch their family as it continues to grow, but this time there’s room for that.
