Bronte House

It also transforms what was a somewhat gloomy house into a crisp bright aesthetic inspired by the client’s time in Bronte Beach Australia.

The rear ground floor wrap-around extension uses the chamfered site boundary and planning restrictions on its height, to create what feels like a vaulted space for kitchen dining and play. Here rooflights are arranged for a quiet and secluded feeling, despite being tightly nestled between neighbours, while an integrated blind on the largest rooflight affords an incredible tranquility on sunny days.

Above, an irrigated wildflower roof provides both biodiversity and a fascinating eye-level view from the bathroom, which itself now renovated, provides a reading nook beside the new stair of pale waxed pine.

This terraced property backs on to neighbouring gardens and where three terraces create a block, nearby houses trap summer heat – a new extension was in danger of overheating, so ventilation was considered key. Electric opening roof lights ensure the new south-facing kitchen space is well vented and at the top of the house, an electric opening rooflight placed with the upper fixed rooflight extracts air by chimney effect through the house.

Planning restriction on extending the original butterfly roof had prevented extension over the main house, but a permitted development extension above the outrigger has enabled a spectacular top rooflight which filters an endlessly pleasing kaleidoscope of light through the core of the house.

The new attic bedroom is formed with the existing original inclined roof ridge beam – the original and new geometries meet to create a natural void for a vast trapezoid rooflight, as if marrying the house with the sky.

Annual CO2 data was not provided