a home opened up

Architect Olly Bray explains how his practice, OB Architecture, created a large open plan extension to provide one family with the communal space they needed

our clients owned a modest 1970s family home situated in a pleasant part of Winchester. With a growing family they wanted to make more of the house. While the upstairs was attractive and functional and gave them the space they needed, the ground floor was dark and cramped, with a convoluted layout and lots of small rooms.

The connection with the garden was compromised by small windows and a lack of direct access from the kitchen. Perhaps most significantly, the house was architecturally of little value; the plain, dated façades didn’t reflect the lovely setting looking out over the South Downs.

With a relatively limited budget to transform the property into a bright contemporary family home, we had to prioritise which spaces required updating.

As the upstairs already worked well for the family, it was more prudent to invest their money by developing the living spaces on the ground floor, where they tend to spend most of their time together. We started by looking at how we could open out the rooms in a cost-effective way without compromising the structural integrity of the house and blowing the budget on a complex steel frame arrangement.

The first move was to extend the entrance hall out at the front to create a welcoming new double-height glazed area. The stairs were re-orientated and the hallway widened to create a more generous entrance. The existing reception room felt disconnected from the rest of the house, so a new opening was created between here and the hallway, and a glazed sliding door was inserted to maintain the visual connection.

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