A rear side extension opens the back of this Victorian terrace house to its garden. A new glazed roof brings light deep into the plan. The floor throughout the rear of the house was lowered to provide additional head height and a consistent level with the new patio. The large pivot door allows unobstructed views of the garden, visually extending the space.
The exterior is imagined as three volumes each defined by a different material. The painted brick of the first floor sits on top of a striped timber cube with the smallest volume realised in ribbed render. The party wall is defined with white mosaic tiles and an oversized galvanised downpipe.
The tiles continue inside, defining a structural column and the plant shelf which extends from front to back. The interior uses a paired back material palette; whitewashed douglas fir joinery sits on top of a seamless resin floor with an enamel splatterware worktop and full wall pink curtain bringing texture to the space. The use of douglas fir continues for the structural fins and window reveals in the side extension.
The large open plan space has become the new heart of the home for the clients and their young family.
Contractor: John D Ltd
Photography by Jim Stephenson
The conversion of a derelict WW2 RAF Operations Block into a family home. The existing building sits on the decommissioned RAF Spilsby. The proposal weaves the site’s chequered history into the fabric of the building. The architectural language of the site’s military past is merged with that of surrounding industrial agricultural forms to influence the new build elements. These are either elevated or built into the existing footprint to mitigate any effect on the ecologically sensitive surroundings.
The project received planning permission in March 2023.
A radical transformation of an Edwardian semi-detached house into a colourful family home topped with a stage set Mountain.
Materials, shapes and colours are intersected throughout to create highly textural and tactile spaces. The house takes its design cues from numerous pop culture sources including a Disneyland rollercoaster and a scene from the film trainspotting.
The house opens up progressively as you move through the ground floor, from the dark monochromatic front room through to the light filled extension.
The site slopes towards the garden which allowed the floor level of the back of the house to be lowered by a metre, connecting the new open plan kitchen/diner to the garden. A simple reconfiguration of the first floor provided an additional bedroom.
There was a focus on opening up the space and using the exposed textures and structure as the final finish. There is little built-in furniture to provide ultimate future flexibility.
The existing fabric of the building has been thermally upgraded throughout. The kitchen and exterior lintel facings are made from recycled chopping boards and milk bottle tops.
The exposed lasercut trusses in the extension nod to high-tech architecture and alongside the ranging pole columns, survey marker tiles and partially ruined brick wall add to a sense of the surreal.
Upstairs, the hallway ceiling has been removed opening it up to a new skylight above with the bones of the old house retained. A chequerboard bathroom references original tiles found in the house.
The project is a highly personal response to the family's tastes and way of living.
Photography by Jim Stephenson
Commissioned by the NOW Gallery for their 10 year anniversary, Up in Smoke transforms the gallery into a vibrant cityscape that tells the story of Greenwich Peninsula through its iconic chimneys. The exhibition evokes memories of the area’s extraordinary past, and its transformation from marshland to heavy industry and more recently, to the vibrant cultural hub it is today.
A collaboration with the artist John Booth, Up in Smoke bridges the area’s long history and delves into its interwoven industrial and residential heritage, centring on chimneys as the ever-changing but constant indicator of this narrative.
The five re-imagined chimneys created for this exhibition represent the diverse history of Greenwich Peninsula, from the Powder Magazine used to store gunpowder in the 1700s to the more recent slender tubes of the modern gasworks as well as the chugging stacks of the terrace housing formerly found on Boord Street.
Visitors were invited to walk through, climb up and look in these re-imagined chimneys. They were also asked to imagine their own vision of what future chimneys might look like.
Photography by Charles Emerson
Liquid Geology is a collection of tables continuing the CAN’s experimental research into innovative material use in unexpected contexts.
The series features a dining, coffee and side table characterised by chunky rubber coated bases and slimline, steel enamel tops. The steel is hand cut and lightly bent to form a soft lip around the edge. The tabletops are coated with rich blue, green or orange enamel and fired in a kiln at 820 degrees celsius, before being hand splattered in a contrasting tone and re-fired.
The rough, craggy bases are coated in ‘rubber rock’, a unique material composition of recycled rubber chips and resin developed by CAN whilst researching alternative material uses in furniture production. Each base, which varies in size and form, is hand cast and coated in deep gloss paint to enhance the texture.
CAN’s Liquid Geology explores the idea of contrast through scale, texture and materiality. The collection was inspired by rugged coastal scenery, underwater deep-sea landscapes and Claude Monet’s 1880’s paintings of sunrise and sunset on the River Thames. CAN drew on the rich detailing and colouring of the impressionists’ work alongside the practices’ own ongoing research into geographic contexts to arrive at furniture with an otherworldly feel. The tabletops offer a reflective, lightly undulating surface like that of a lake which appears to float on rocky underwater outcrops, resulting in a collection of sculpture-like furniture designed to intrigue
Photographs by Felix Speller
An extension and ground floor refurbishment to a terraced house in Stoke Newington, London, completing a vibrant and functional home for a young family. With an emphasis on natural materials and a unique approach to design, this renovation turns the once disconnected ground floor into an open plan kitchen and dining area that spills into the garden through a bespoke curved window and oversized glazed door.
The previous layout was a series of disjointed spaces with a failing conservatory facing the garden. CAN redesigned the ground floor plan by introducing a glulam framed extension at the side and rear which allowed a total reworking of the living, kitchen and dining areas. Flexibility was introduced into the open plan design with full height hemp fibre curtains and douglas fir shutters allowing the clients to open and close off spaces as their spatial needs change.
The client’s brief included tranquil forest references which is directly reflected in the inclusion of sustainable materials, a timber-led interior palette and meadow planted roof. The striking green timber structure adds visual interest and warmth to the space, offering a low carbon solution that echoes the client’s desire for sustainability.
The connection to the garden was a key aspect of the design. The west-facing garden, framed by a custom built curved glass window, shifts the focus outward providing views of the lush greenery while flooding the interior with natural light. Overhead glazing further enhances this effect, allowing light to pour into the space from above, reinforcing the extension’s open and airy feel.
CAN’s commitment to realising their client’s low impact brief is evident in material choices. Hemp fibre corrugated cladding on the exterior will weather beautifully over time, changing in colour and texture. Breathable lime wash paint and recycled timber terrazzo kitchen worktops are other examples that highlight the home’s relationship with the environment.
Photography by Rick Pushinsky
A re-imagined Georgian glasshouse re-connects a Grade II Listed townhouse to its garden in Highbury, North London. The chamfered glazed enclosure is hung from a black steel frame which serves as both structure and ornament. Black concertina panels form a plinth to the glass. A bespoke glazed pocket door slides behind a hundred year old brick wall to connect the house to the newly landscaped garden.
Contractor: John D Ltd
Photography by Jim Stephenson
A radical housing type for a new creative community in North Yorkshire. A focus on community space over private gardens. Simple, modulated floor-plates with work-spaces opening onto the communal yard. A timber framework wrapped in Yorkshire stone. A collaboration with Esko Willman for the RIBA Lakes and Dales Competition.
A new artist studio for a sculptor and printmaker nestled along a small industrial mews in New Cross, London. Their different practices required very different work spaces; the sculptor required a big light-filled workshop, whilst the printmaker needed a smaller, darker area to work with UV sensitive materials.
Rather than trying to find a common ground between the scales and requirements of each artist, CAN designed the studio as if it were two adjacent studios on the mews; a large industrial workshop and compact domestic studio. The external styles of the volumes are purposefully opposite in style and represent the opposing scales of the artist's work. The tiled volume houses the smaller working areas, kitchen and bathroom and the workshop is in the larger steel and block volume. Internally, the open-plan space is subtly divided by the change in roof scale and the sculptural element that houses the bathroom. It makes the most of this form and arrangement to maximise sunlight in the kitchen spaces and northern light in the studios.
To maximise space with a limited budget the studio uses a combination of 'off the shelf' materials and materials the clients had accumulated from their practice. It elevates ordinary materials to the extraordinary – for instance, the use of scaffolding to create the roof structure.
The gabled forms take their cue from the generic industrial shed and the 18th century wash-house once located on the site. The tiled gables are ornamented with a double crow step. The volumes are off-set to create an external working area at the rear which also brings southern light into the kitchen through a set of double doors.
Photography by Andy Stagg
A permanent participatory exhibition design for the Farrell Centre. The Urban Rooms are spaces where visitors can reflect on the city of Newcastle and Tyneside as it is now, and, through interactive exhibits and events, make their voices heard in shaping how it might change in the future.
They focus around three themes or actions—Plan, Build and Participate.
“Plan” centres on Farrell’s Newcastle City Masterplan, the model of which stands in the centre of this room, around which are displayed maps of the city from the sixteenth century to the present.
“Build” uses the centre’s own building as a case study for an exploration of the architectural process, from drawing board to the materials used in its construction. Installations and activities bring to the fore planning’s long standing role as a proposition for (urban) change.
“Participate” features a range of displays and activities which invite visitors to reflect on how we use and understand the city. “Mapping Tyneside” captures the invisible networks and connections between the places that are meaningful to us. “The People’s Plinth” brings together objects that tell stories about the city. “Greetings from Tyneside” asks us to look at how we see ourselves and our city, and how we might describe it to those on the outside.
The Urban Rooms are also where the centre holds its live programmes of talks, workshops and community forums, which together with displays, objects and activities, offer a vital platform for new and diverse ideas and perspectives around the future of Tyneside and of city-making more generally.
The design language used for the urban rooms takes cues from the temporary structures and graphics that represent change in the evolving city. Scaffolding has been rubbed down and arranged to form the plinths and furniture. Storm board, made from recycled plastic and usually used for hoarding, forms the shelves and furniture panels with sandbags giving the structures ballast.
Bespoke oriel window scaffold caps have been 3D printed to add an ornamental twist to the structures, the same oriel windows that form the corners to the urban rooms. Differing hazard stripes form the visual language: orange and white is participatory (magnetic walls), yellow and black is timeline, and blue and white lead you to the Rosetta stone interpretation panels, realised in broken plasterboard.
An exhibition that has been designed to evolve as the city around it does.
Photography by Jim Stephenson
The Strait of Gibraltar, a stretch of water that lies between Spain and Morocco may only be a mere 14 km, but geopolitically speaking it is more akin to a deep abyss, separating as it does two major continents.
Fuelled by the idea of creating an imaginary infrastructure spanning the Strait and thus a deeper connection between Europe and Africa, ’Project Heracles’ is the cumulative of a call to arms where participants were asked to respond with suggestions on a postcard. This is CAN’s proposal.
Encapsulating the eclecticism of London, each unique chair is made from London Plane trees brought down in storms at Soho Square and Denmark Hill, anodised scaffold tubes and iridescent 3D printed rocks from the Thames foreshore.
A constant cycle of demolition, reimagining and rebirth, this chair unites and reinterprets three disparate elements of London’s urban fabric. The iridescent rocks are scans of rubble from London’s past, the new and ancient detritus washed up on the Thames beaches. The scaffolding that adorns the ever changing face of London and the urban trees that provide relief to the impenetrable surfaces of the city.
Photography by Luke Fullalove
A permanent public artwork designed in collaboration with artist Felicity Hammond. The work was commissioned by Brighton and Hove Council as the focus of a new civic space between the historically significant Portslade town hall and the newly built Victoria Road Housing Development in Portslade, Hove.
Forecast is a cluster of three organic forms appearing as weathered sections of brickwork, washed up and castaway by the sea. The forms are made from cement mixed with an aggregate of waste bricks leftover from the construction of the new housing. Sited in the central civic space of the development, fragments of brick are revealed on the polished surface of the sculptures, mimicking the way that the tide erodes and smoothes industrial materials. The history of the site and its coastal location are embedded in the processes used to make the artwork, which references the local former brickfield and the polishing company that once occupied the adjacent town hall.
Holding the polished brick forms in place are a series of steel hoops, which at once blend into the aesthetic of municipal design yet also stand out, like a warning or a marker. The painted steel mimics the change in texture on the concrete forms, suggesting a rising tidal line; a hint at the challenges faced by coastal towns. Through this gesture, Forecast responds to the very nature of permanence in relation to public art, asking its audience not only to consider the material histories related to the site, but also its future form.
Photography by Richard Chivers & Felicity Hammond
Supported by Arts Council England
CAN’s shortlisted proposal for the Tooley Street Open Competition run by the London Festival of Architecture.
A chainmail theatre curtain sits atop a colonnade of mooring posts. The drawing of the curtains and Scrolling LED sign guide people towards the less polluted and congested riverside path as well as displaying other information and welcoming messages.
The pavilion provides highly visible way-finding whilst keeping the pavement free of obstructions. The chainmail curtains act as a visual marker and meeting point in this dis-orienting part of London Bridge. A much needed bit of theatre for this neglected site. A collaboration with Eddie Blake.
A small bit of architecture for friends of the studio. CAN were tasked with opening up the back of the house to better address its large garden and provide a more socially focussed ground floor.
The old back elevation was dominated by a large conservatory. Instead of totally removing this, we retained its dwarf walls and foundations, with the new extension built off these. This saved both cost and embodied carbon.
The new lightweight timber framed extension is clad in Welsh Larch stained to the same tone as the Japanese Maple in the garden. Mosaic tiles frame the new windows with large galvanized planters arranged to match the frame the view out. The large open plan space has become the new heart of the home for the clients and their young family.
Ty Coch borrows its name from nearby Castell Coch. The Red House now sits next to the Red Castle.
Photography by Pete Helme
Installation & Exhibition Design for Sir John Soane’s Museum.
A collaboration with Harry Lawson.
Drawing from Soane’s approach to collecting, the installation takes the form of three cabinets, entitled All That Was, All That Is and All That Could Have Been. Inside each cabinet, CAN and Lawson have placed a number of objects—including both the natural and man-made, the fragmentary and complete, the rarefied and everyday.
Together these micro-collections reflect on the ways we understand and appreciate physical objects in the digital age, and how, in turn, they shape our understanding of the wider world.
All That Was
Constructed in the form of a façade, this cabinet reflects on the conflicts between developing new architectural ideas and retaining historic architectural elements. It takes the physical object as its starting point, presenting historical artefacts, ranging from old rocks to redundant technology, to examine how objects are read and understood in the present and how their meaning can shift over time.
All That Is
Taking the form of a scaffold, this cabinet reflects on the idea of a construction forever in a state of flux. The objects within this cabinet—replicas or objects created in series—aim to unpick the notion of the hallowed or sacred object. Following the way images exist on the internet in infinitely reproduced form, here objects appear accelerated into caricatures of their original intentions.
All That Could Have Been
This cabinet adopts a tomb-like form to examine the space of contemporary cultural production. Trapped in the limelight are a range of fragments, building materials, exhibition labels and vinyl letters. Taken together, this incoherent collection of the unrealised, underdeveloped and implied posits a kind of completion for what was never completed or reached its final form.
Photography by Tim Bowditch
CAN, in collaboration with Nina Shen-Poblete, were asked to design a window installation for the RIBA's ‘Regent Street Windows project’.
Our window re-imagines the glazed street frontage of 76 Portland Place in a ghosted silhouette of the by-gone Georgian terrace. The ornate openings celebrate a lost street view but their un-ceremonious ‘blocking up’ reminds us of the impermanence of our city fabric and their layered stories. On closer inspection, the blocks reveal exquisitely ornamented surfaces that have been machine cut, using a process normally reserved for precious stone and marble. The humble breezeblock, once a ubiquitous building material has thus been framed, displayed and elevated as a high-end product.
The installation continues inside by framing the waiting area with a sofa made from squidgy foam breeze blocks, made in-house.
CAN were asked by Unit 9 to produce an artwork for their ongoing series, the Hoxton Window Project .
The design imbeds itself in its context, reflecting the eclectic history of the square back on its self. It plays on the square’s ecclesiastical past by using the church's technique of celebrating people and events through the use of Stained Glass.
Each of the three windows is dedicated to one of the square’s most influential people; John Newton, the clergyman who wrote ‘Amazing Grace’, Peter Durand, a merchant who invented the process of tinning and preserving food and lastly, Eddie Piller, the founder of the square’s first nightclub, The Blue Note, which signalled the tide of the creative industries to the area.
Mat Barnes | Eddie Blake | Photos + Film by Tamás Olajos
The internal re-modelling of a 1960's semi to utilise its square plan and abundance of natural light.
The scheme hinges on the installation of a single I-beam opening the kitchen up to the rest of the ground floor. The kitchen takes it's ornamental cue from local train stations and the uniform brick of the surrounding garden estate.
The garden is concealed behind a full wall of baby pink latex.
A rooflight was added to bring light into the new bathroom with cupboards and niches set into a false wall.
CAN has been commissioned to design a single person dwelling for an artist on an extremely tight site in the Brookmill Conservation Area, Deptford.
The scheme is currently in planning.
