Challenging the scarcity of outdoor living spaces in London, Gruff Architects places a garden in the middle of the Harefield Road East House, which faces the house with fully operable windows, blurring the division between indoors and outdoors and offering moments of pleasant interaction with nature and sunlight
Challenge in London: a home to experience a year-round green life, the Harefield Road East House
In Harefield Road East House, a seeded courtyard at the center of the ground floor of a typical semi-detached house in South London provides an urban oasis of tranquility and greenery
The client is a family of three who wish to renovate and expand the property after returning from a period of residence in Sydney by integrating the benefits of an outdoor lifestyle experienced abroad with the family's multi-ethnic heritage - Malaysia, Australia and England - into the typical London cottage
These inputs become the focus of Gruff architects' design: located in the Brockley Conservation Area, the home is expanded with new spaces for the kitchen, dining room and a service area, but more importantly, the architectural composition focuses on creating a connection to the garden
Gruff's design focuses on the central courtyard, which lies between the original house and the new expansion and embodies the new function of connecting the two buildings together and adding natural light and a " mellow" layout to the heart of the home
In the expansion, a section of corner windows drastically opens up the building allowing direct sunlight and ideally opening up the garden into the house: the goal is to have hybrid indoor-outdoor environments and be able to enjoy them all year round. A combination of natural woods, exposed gray brick and glazed surfaces appear both inside and out, blurring the boundaries of the home and creating a relaxing environment
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