project

Listed villa restoration + extension, Portobello This grade B listed Georgian house in the Portobello Conservation Area in Edinburgh had been used for commercial purposes for many years.  The original building had been extended to both the rear and side, resulting in a disjointed layout with lots of separate rooms.  The brief was to create a warm home for the client’s growing family, which met the needs of modern living, while respecting the historic features of the house.    AGORA proposed the creation of a sociable kitchen and dining space which would sit to the rear of the house and better connect to the garden. This was achieved by opening up two adjacent rooms, and replacing a poor quality utility extension with a highly glazed dining area on the same footprint. A section of the rear wall was removed to connect the extension to the original house.  Large windows and sliding hardwood doors provide a connection to the garden. A linear rooflight not only brings light into the kitchen space, but into the adjacent hallway via a high-level internal window.  A practical shower and utility room was created by removing cupboards and raising the floor level of an old side extension to match the main house. The utility functions are concealed within built-in units, which also provide valuable storage.  The master bedroom has a secret ensuite, accessed through the bespoke built-in wardrobe.  Historic features, such as the original cornice to the drawing room, iron balustrade and stone stair and floors were restored.  Thermal insulation has been incorporated discreetly where possible to improve the energy performance of this historic building.  The original sash and case windows to the front of the house had previously had their astragals removed, and were therefore replaced with slimline double glazed sashes to match the original profiles.  The original sashes have been retained to the rear, and the draught proofing renewed. 

Open plan living, Corstorphine, Edinburgh This mid-century terraced house is located in the quiet suburban area of Corstorphine, Edinburgh.  A previous front extension had resulted in a long narrow kitchen, separated from the living room and the back garden. The fragmented layout meant that the family were often in separate rooms: cooking, doing homework, watching TV.  Our brief was to create a layout that would allow the family to be together more, and to bring the kitchen to the heart of the home. The solution was to create an L shaped open plan living space, oriented towards the back garden.  Walls to the old kitchen and hall were removed to open up the space, and the windows and doors altered to maximise light and garden connections.  To the front of the house, in the old kitchen, a home office / spare bedroom has been created.  A cosy “snug” sits at the centre of the plan, with a focal fireplace.  The kitchen and dining areas are located to the rear, with bi-fold doors and a picture window to the garden.  The exposed steel structure helps to define the zones. The kitchen units have been treated as a piece of furniture: appliances are hidden behind full height oak doors, with the sink set within a central alcove.  Full height shelving frames an oak lined window seat as well as providing a place to display the clients’ personal items. An oak herringbone floor is used throughout the ground floor, and the green and pink colour palette is adopted in the kitchen units, walls and steelwork, and the soft furnishings.  This continuity of finishes, along with minimal details like flush skirtings, frameless doors and transparent switches help to create a feeling of space. The resulting spaces are calm and relaxed, with enough room to accommodate large gatherings, while having more intimate spaces for cosy nights by the fire. BeforeAfter

Sea view garden room, Joppa Our brief for this project was to create additional space, and to also make the most of the panoramic sea view. The house is a traditional stone terrace in a dramatic position, overlooking the sea at Joppa, Edinburgh. However, the kitchen at the rear of the house did not take full advantage of the view.  Additionally, the clients had a need for more space for both relaxing and working. The solution is a modestly proportioned zinc clad extension, which opens up the back of the house to frame the sea view. The floor level steps down from the main house, creating high ceilings and additionally providing level access to the garden. The removal of a boiler cupboard maximises the opening between the kitchen and extension, creating views through the house. A new boiler and laundry room is incorporated discreetly, hidden behind a frameless door. The steps down to the extension incorporate informal seating and bookshelves, while the linear rooflight above floods both the extension and the kitchen with natural light. The built-in desk and shelving provide a compact space for both home working and schoolwork. The durable standing seam zinc cladding and roofing will weather to a matt grey, contrasting with the Siberian larch clad recess, which provides shelter from the high winds. Panoramic bi-fold doors allow the clients to enjoy the coastal views from the warmth on a Scottish winter day.  Alternatively, they can be opened to create a truly indoor-outdoor space.

A Modest Proposal: Wraparound House Wraparound House is what happens when you go on holiday to Highland Perthshire, and it rains, constantly. Unable to contemplate yet another card game, we watched rain sheet down onto the loch beyond, and started idly drawing shapes on the windows. The hills were gentle, the site of our cottage grassy flat, with land rising up behind. Trees all around, big skies, and loud winds.  We were warm and comfortable inside, squabbles about Uno notwithstanding. But we couldn’t see that much of the landscape from our spot at the kitchen table.  What kind of holiday home would we self-build, if we had the time and (modest) means? The feel we wanted was easy – a house that would sit lightly on this lovely plot, wrapping around us like a hug. Long views to the outside, obviously. But we wanted uninterrupted views inside too: streamlined design that would make the most of a relatively compact footprint. Because architects don’t have pipe dreams, they have sketch dreams, and the scaffolding for those dreams is reality. We wanted a scheme that would exude ‘clean warmth’ – tactile materials that encouraged everyone to sink into the space; while being stress-free to look after. Living in a traditional house has many perks, but dust collects in cornices; in this fantasy new build we wanted polished concrete, brick, walnut. A place to work, a place to hunker down, and a place to socialise. With these priorities pinned down the site started speaking. We were always going to want windows running around the property, so planned for glazing and gazing. A sink with a view at one end, a snug with two at the other. Between them, a double sided fireplace breaking up the ground floor, with feature shelving for our unmanageable pile of design and engineering books. So far, so good, what else? Second homes in Scotland have to work hard, they need to feel cosy when it’s just two of you, and spacious when there’s a crowd. So we mapped out a double height entertaining space, affording enough room upstairs for three bedrooms. From there it was straightforward to block out a concealed pantry and utility to hide away mess, the other side of which stood a nook for tidier, professional work. Over that ran a self-supporting staircase picked out in the same wood as the minimal kitchen cabinets, which themselves led right up to the ceiling (so as not to snag the eye). Flow not friction, when we design for ourselves we use the same principles as we do for our clients. And we’re inspired by our clients’ properties too. We’ve loved using larch on several recent residential builds, so we specified that for ourselves: in wraparound (that word again) form. Large sliding doors, triple-glazed bronze-coloured aluminium frames and hidden gutters keep the form simple and reduce visual clutter.  The brick-clad chimney gives the proposal its anchor. It brings weight and texture to the otherwise lightweight envelope, marking the fireplace as the warm centre of the house. Wraparound House remains unbuilt, for now. But the exercise has developed from a wet-weather sketch into a fully worked concept: a modest rural new-build shaped by landscape, material warmth and the practical routines of family life.

Stone + charred wood extension, The Grange Architects AGORA were commissioned to redesign this traditional detached house in the Grange Conservation Area of Edinburgh, to create a home suitable for modern family life.  The owners wanted a contemporary layout with well-connected spaces and lots of natural light, while preserving the character of this period property. Our proposal removes a series of incongruous rear extensions.  These had been added piecemeal, resulting in an incoherent internal layout.  A new rear extension provides a generous kitchen and dining space, accessed directly from the central hallway.  The kitchen also connects to a new family room within the main house, with large sliding doors creating a flexible layout with the kitchen at its heart.  Large rooflights bring natural light into the kitchen, while picture windows and sliding doors provide views through the house and access to the garden.  Bespoke bench seating provides space for larger gatherings or family meals, and a new patio allows the kitchen to spill out into the garden. The extension also creates a practical utility room, with a new back door to the house and an adjacent shower room.  At first floor, a new guest suite is created, with the existing quirky level changes retained.  Externally a palette of charred wood cladding distinguishes the new addition from the original house, while elements of dressed sandstone evoke the traditional architecture of the area. Elsewhere in the house, the family bedrooms are reconfigured to provide generous spaces with an ensuite and family bathroom. BeforeAfter BeforeAfter BeforeAfter

Bungalow renovation + extension, North Berwick One of the first things we noticed on visiting this three bedroom sixties bungalow in North Berwick was its leafy south-facing garden. This was ideal for our clients’ energetic dog, but less so for them, as they had to grapple with a confused interior layout and an ageing conservatory each time they headed outside. The scene from the front door was particularly uninviting (just a blank wall and a bathroom door) but the back door problem was bigger: there wasn’t one. The owners wanted light, warmth and above all practical flow, a space that would withstand whatever the coastal weather threw at them. AGORA’s response was to both improve and extend, reconfiguring the front of the house to create a line of sight through to a new open plan zone at the rear. Relocating the original ‘blocker’ bathroom to an adjacent bedroom revealed views of the garden right from the front step, while we retained the bedroom count by subdividing the original primary living room into two: a family snug and a nursery for the couple’s newborn daughter. Meanwhile the larch-clad addition to the back of the house transformed the original narrow kitchen into a welcoming family space, with an all-important back door, boot and utility room to one side and a glazed feature corner on the other, opening out into the garden. Here a powder-coated alumunium overhang provides shelter from the better Scottish seasons (warm rain and sun) and sliding alu-clad timber doors ward off the worst (cold rain, sleet and snow). High performance glazing continues in the rooflight around the client’s longed-for log burner, with an AGORA-designed window seat and media wall matching the handle-less Archispek kitchen. We’ve used streamlined joinery elsewhere too, to demarcate different zones – for example the roomy storage wall dividing the kitchen island from the inviting sofa, and the pocket door which closes off the high spec utility room. The clients’ choices of warm earth tones for cabinetry, timber and furnishings ground the scheme in bad weather and glow in good, creating a wonderful home all year round. And, when it’s wild out, they now have a place to wash off dog and kids too, ensuring the space will stay shiny long into the future.   AGORA’s favourite features: Design: the larch junctions of the soffit which match the herringbone patterns picked by the clients for the flooring and hearth. The setting out took some time to get right, but it was very much worth it. Practical: correcting the ‘wiggly’ front entry and drawing a line front to back by nudging the bathroom next door (which also meant we could reuse the existing plumbing connections). BeforeAfter

Sunroom extension Duddingston Road West, Edinburgh When the green-fingered owners of this Duddingston property briefed AGORA they were very clear: they wanted to reconfigure their bungalow so they could access nature all year around. Nestled next to the craggy slopes of Holyrood Park, and opposite a tree-fringed golf course, the property’s location was spectacular. However, it was also on a corner plot, exposed on two sides to passing foot and vehicle traffic. Having recently moved from a large acreage in Fife the couple wanted the same lush surroundings but on a more manageable scale, creating a flexible space they could enjoy with friends and family (including two very active grandchildren!).  AGORA recommended that an isolated dining room to the front of the property become the couple’s evening sitting room, creating the opportunity to bring cooking and eating zones together in one large, knocked-through space to the back. We also designed a small side extension (4m x 3m) to create a garden room, which abuts the original property to form a protected courtyard. This contemporary addition outlined in sandstone and zinc is both a strong silhouette in its own right, and a permeable gateway to gardens and courtyard. Manufactured by local joiners R.F. Slight the slim-profile windows use Accoya timber. This modified wood offers great strength and stability which means the frames can remain slender even though double glazed. In other words it looks delicate but works hard, offering great heat retention. Generous doors to both the south and north, full height feature windows and two roof lights frame views of gorse-covered peaks and golf club greenery, inspiring the owners’ work-in-progress oasis on the courtyard. Since the project was completed they have put the inside and outside spaces to extensive test, from morning teas to late night dinner parties. Their striking Riddle & Coghill kitchen serves as mission control when the grandchildren come over, with its expansive island giving good views of back lawns, courtyard and garden room. And, when they are gone, they have a great variety of places to rest and recover, including the seating set-up in the garden room and their light-washed courtyard.   AGORA’s favourite features: Design: It’s a luxury to have public rooms that face south, north and west, but in Scotland every ray of light counts, and if you can orientate your spaces to track the sun, do! The garden room and courtyard screen out the roads to reveal swathes of trees, sky and the rocky Sleeping Lion in Holyrood Park, as well as the lovely stonework.  Practical: The specially insulated pocket door which separates the garden room from the kitchen, also fabricated by R.F. Slight. Despite the thermal properties of Accoya wood, Building Standards do not usually allow this much glazing in an extension of this kind, due to perceived heat loss (think old conservatories in winter!). This door allowed us to glory in glass and meet regulations; combined with underfloor heating it makes for a particularly cosy space.

Flat extension, Morningside Like many Edinburgh properties, our project in Morningside started out as a Victorian terraced house, but was sub-divided into two apartments decades ago. Our clients had raised a family in their garden flat, but with their children now grown they had more time to attend to long-standing niggles, not least a conservatory near the end of its natural life. This glazed lean-to addition had forced workarounds over the years: the door to the small kitchen spur at the back of the flat had long since been blocked off and co-opted as a wall for storage, while the internal dining room ironically received very little light from the conservatory’s glass double doors. As a result, this middle room was not particularly inviting. The owners’ brief was clear: brighter, more comfortable rooms that would suit this new phase of their life; all we had to do was puzzle out the right moves. Our space was constrained outside as well as in: in common with many 19th century terraced houses  the property didn’t have back garden access, so all crew and materials would need to enter through the front door. However constraints can be liberating. We knew we needed to improve the flow through to the garden as well as to the kitchen and dining room, but with several other back yards abutting theirs the key would be to use glazing judiciously – serving up slices of sky rather than neighbours’ washing. High level windows would in turn free up wall space for an extended kitchen and storage, and help deliver light to that dark dining room. Working with contractor GJE Joinery we demolished the old conservatory and external stairs and also took down a section of the original kitchen wall, so that we could install a peninsula facing onto the new range. Designed to give views of garden and chef (but NOT the sink), this turned the old narrow kitchen into a much more comfortable cooking and entertaining space, flowing through to the dining room through an oversized internal window and floor to ceiling opening. If you were being particularly technical you might say the symmetrically chamfered walls at the end of the dining room lead the eye through the glazing to the garden beyond. But it’s quicker to just say it looks great!   AGORA’s favourite features: Design: The 6m2 of glass! High level clerestory windows combine with the roof light to create a luminous but private space, and the Crittall style window between the kitchen and the dining room has turned a problem into a feature. All external glass has low U-Values (in layman’s terms meaning it offers excellent thermal performance) with low maintenance aluminium frames, in stark contrast to the old draughty conservatory. The clients’ neutral colour palette also really puts that light centre stage, and provides a wonderful warm backdrop for their wooden furniture. Practical: The successful partitioning of the clients’ water supply from the flat upstairs, a problem that was discovered after we’d broken ground. Though frustrating, after liaison with the supplier we managed to secure the separation of the supply at the street juncture. This then permitted the replacement of old lead pipes and improvements to heating and water systems. BeforeAfter

Loft conversion, Edinburgh. A new stor(e)y for a growing family This loft conversion is a great example of what happens when clients think ‘in the box’: two statement dormers created brand new sleeping quarters for this young family. Ask any new parent what they want, their reply will mostly be some version of ‘a good night’s sleep’. However, although the brief for this bungalow renovation began with new bedrooms, it didn’t end there. The existing property in east Edinburgh had been extended by previous owners, but it was awkwardly open plan, and what ‘functional’ rooms there were felt too small. With a baby on the way, our clients wanted to upsize the downstairs bathroom and study, alongside a request for a loft conversion with two extra bedrooms, an ensuite and a dressing room. The only snag? In an ideal world neither new bedroom would face onto the busy main road. Well, we all take our rest seriously at AGORA, and we also like a challenge. We recommended adding two large dormers front and back; the ensuite would lead through a dressing room to the principal bedroom on the side of the house, with the new baby given peaceful quarters at the back. To make this work the parents would have to place their bed under the eaves, but this position would be offset by large skylights to create a sense of airiness and volume. The benefit of this scheme was that we could position the staircase on the other side of the loft, unlocking a whole series of improvements on the ground floor. Taking a bite out of the unwieldy living room-diner meant we could create a really spacious hall, with pocket doors leading to a much bigger bathroom, and a small-but-perfectly-sized home office. And did we mention the storage possibilities? A cloakroom corner, tucked away from the new line of sight from front door through to the living room and garden, and a handy understairs cupboard, with a hidden door camouflaged within tongue and groove cladding. These core features were all there in the original concept stage, and were finessed over three months of design development before we applied for planning permission. Scaling down the original back room gave the clients permission to think big elsewhere, and they specified some really arresting features before going out to tender. One great example is the bold Crittal-style dark graphite frames for the glazed internal doors,  a lovely reference to the property’s thirties roots.  These doors allow light to diffuse through the house, and mirror the existing windows. Carrying on the graphic theme, that transformative staircase was also painted a moody black to show off the crisp vertical lines. Deft colour blocking continues in the bedrooms: a scalloped blue border in the baby’s room, a green ceiling in the spare bedroom, and warmer pink and biscuit shades in the principal suite. Outside we took a different approach: the dormers for this loft conversion were big so needed delicate handling. In the end we opted to wrap them in Thermopine, a modified wood chosen for its stability and compatibility with tinted coating (which ensures even weathering). The silvery colour also blends in well with prevailing Scottish elements, which often paint the sky grey. Talking of sky, we also made the skylights upstairs taller than standard, to ensure the owners could see greenery as well as clouds. This creates a more interesting outlook: the weather can be grey, but there’s always something going on in a garden (even if it’s just plants versus wind!). All told, this was the little house that could: after six months of construction it had grown a whole new floor! Still, we’re not done yet. Stage Two will see the infill of a small alley between the utility and an as-yet unrenovated room off the back of the living space, which will then flex to be whatever the family needs: playroom, gym, second workspace, additional bedroom. That’s the beauty of phasing a renovation – you can make a big leap and then see where you’ve landed before moving forward. Here’s to the next jump! 

Brick + larch extension, Portobello AGORA were approached to create a small extension to this terraced house in Portobello, a seaside suburb of Edinburgh. The brief was to create an additional living space linked to the kitchen, and to improve the connection to the garden. The clients, a family of four, wanted to create not only a new indoor space, but an outdoor social space, centred around a firepit. Our solution was to propose a timber clad extension, with doors to two sides, set into brick recesses. The recesses perform a practical function, sheltering the doors from the sea winds. The brick was chosen to provide a visual link to the existing house. Following research into cladding materials and types of timber, larch was selected as a natural, durable material to clearly set the extension apart as a new addition. The open-jointed rainscreen cladding is untreated and will weather naturally to a silver-grey.  The steep zinc monopitch roof provides a generous ceiling height. The extra space creates a sociable kitchen / living / dining room, with both visual and physical links to the garden. A wood burning stove provides a focal point, with brick used internally to reference the external materials. AGORA provided a full architectural service, including applying for planning permission, building warrant and acting as contract administrator while works were on site.