St Peters Road

The street is made up of short Georgian terraces, detached Victorian villas and squeezed in post-war houses. Within these rambling gems is 15 St Peters Road, a four storey Georgian house with an old flint walled courtyard at the rear catching the morning sun.

This moment in the sun gave the client confidence she could create a surprisingly delightful house tucked away down a quiet back road of Margate. The brief required RL-a to make sense of the entrance having lost its original portico some years ago, creating an arrival fit for the scale of the house. The second part of the brief was to remove the existing upvc conservatory and extend out into the courtyard to provide one large reception room leading out into the courtyard.

The final part of the brief was to replace bathrooms, kitchen and provide a mistress suite at the top of the house. The client was looking for an extension which emphasised it's connection with the courtyard but also made better connection with the basement kitchen. RL-a took a phenomenological approach, a literal understanding of the clients desire to be simultaneously inside and outside at the same time.

The extension took a triangular form with the pinnacle reaching out into the courtyard. At which point it catches both the sun rising and setting at the end of each day. The garden wrapping itself around the triangle encases the internal space completing the sense of being internal and external at the same point in time. The new stairs connecting the basement and ground provides another lifting moment as you rise into the morning sun.

Photography by Jo Bridges www.jobridgesphotography.com