Mountain View is a radical renovation and extension of an Edwardian semi-detached house into a colourful home topped with a stage set Mountain. It is located in South East London and designed by CAN for a family with young children.

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.

The project has been covered widely in the press including features in Wallpaper* and The Sunday Times.

It was named in the Observer’s top 10 global architecture projects of 2020, was a finalist in the RIBA House of the Year and won multiple other awards.

Photography by Jim Stephenson