How to create a room from a London garden

Family needs prompted the client to revise the garden space at the back of her home, a Victorian two-family building in Stockwell, to create a small home for her mother who had come to move to the city: an autonomous and detached space but close to the family, which could be harmoniously integrated into the context. Wilkinson King Architects carries out a graceful but evocative intervention, according to a “romantic” approach (with solid Anglo-Saxon roots) that blurs the built work into the green space that guards and envelops it.

The building is located at the far end of the plot, in a portion of the area formerly occupied by a raised terrace, and comprises, in a unique setting, a bedroom, a living room with kitchenette, and a bathroom separated by a full-height wardrobe.

The construction weaves a biunivocal dialogue with the garden. The essential volume, clad in charred wood that takes on the shades of the surroundings, opens up on the front through a pergola that acts as a filter between the common open-air space and the private one, and which over time will support the creepers. On the front, a sliding glass wall opens onto the pergola, screened by sliding lattice panels that protect intimacy and at the same time offer an unobstructed view of the outside through the large porthole.

In the interiors, the choice of a light-coloured material palette (birch wood in the multilayer wall coverings, Douglas fir in the floors) contrasts with the dark exteriors and expands the perception of space, giving it brightness and domestic warmth. The structure with visible wooden pillars and beams declares the straightforward and materic character of the construction: on the roof, diagonal rafters recall the weave of tree branches, leading the eye beyond the circular skylights from which the view of the foliage above leaks out.

The building is designed with particular attention to environmental sustainability thanks to high insulation, electric underfloor heating and the study of openings to encourage natural light and ventilation. The dry- technology, which can be easily dismantled, favours total reversibility of the work.