London is full of Edwardian half-houses, although they are hard to spot. They look like typical red brick semi-detached or terraced homes but there’s a difference.
Half-houses are a pair of attached houses that share an entrance. The front door will open into a tight, right-angled hallway with two front doors leading off it to the right and the left into the two homes.
The Youngs’ family home on the eastern edge of Peckham Rye Park and Common is such a place, built in 1908.
Stuart Youngs, founder and creative director of Studio Texture — an agency that runs brand campaigns for charities and not-for-profit organisations — moved down to the area between East Dulwich and Nunhead in 2006 from Clapton and bought the two-up, two-down half-house in 2008.
"It had so much potential and everything you could need," says Youngs. "It had a garden, and a shed. It was a grown-up house."
And he did some pretty grown-up things there. Aelia moved in in 2012, the year the couple married, and in 2015 the first baby arrived, followed by the second. The couple now have Zami (7), Raef (5) and Sufjan (2).
"By this point we knew we needed that extra bedroom. The neighbours and had put another two bedrooms and a bathroom in the loft, so we were fixed on that as a plan," Youngs explains.
But their architect, Henri Bredenkamp of London-based Studio30, had other ideas. "We wanted to maximise the space, create a flow throughout the house and add extra bedrooms, but without compromising the original configuration of the house and without reinventing it," Bredenkamp says.
So rather than squeezing two more bedrooms and a bathroom into the loft, they agreed to carve out one large master bedroom in the attic, with an ensuite.
The staircase became a major part of the design, acting as an open space in the centre of the house without multiple doors. "The stairs just lead straight up into the suite rather than onto a landing that then leads off to two separate bedrooms," he says."We didn’t want the stairs to cut the space," add architect Bredenkamp who has bagged several Don’t Move Improve Awards from New London Architecture over the years. (studio30architects.co.uk).
A dormer extension was added to the back of the loft with dual suspended glazed roof lanterns to flood the suite with light. In a busy house with now three children, it also gives the Youngs a retreat and a sense of space.
The original ground floor had consisted of a large, boxy reception and a similar sized dining room, with a narrow galley kitchen half the size, and a patio that ran around the kitchen. Studio30 designed a wraparound extension with a glass pitched side return, doubling the width of the kitchen and bringing daylight much deeper into the home. "The idea is to see sky as far into the house as possible," says Bredenkamp. There is now a sofa area in the kitchen too making it a sociable part of the house.
The redesign and build took the house from 775 sq ft to 1,313 sq ft – nearly doubling it. "We tried to ensure there were no dead spaces, no lobbies or corridors, yet there is plenty of circulation through the reception room and kitchen. There is plenty of built-in storage which cleverly hides away the Lego and the rest of the children’s plastic fantastic. The washing machine is hidden away under the stairs, along with storage for toys under the stairs on the first floor and there are built-in wardrobes into the eaves in the master bedroom.
Every inch is put to good use to maximise the square footage, and yet opening up the stairwell and the penetration of daylight means it never feels cramped.
An extra room was added in the garden too. After the initial extension was completed during the Covid-19 crisis, Studio30 was invited back after the peak of the pandemic to create an office.
"There is a beautiful Liliac tree at the bottom of the small garden so we didn’t want to build over that or create a bog-standard box. Plus the Youngs requested a studio with a day bed, office space and a shed for general storage," Bredenkamp explains.
So he designed a triangular garden room to save the tree, create depth and to keep a connection with the kitchen and the back of the house. "The flush levels between the studio and the patio makes it feel as if you are working in the garden, yet sheltered," says Youngs. A functional shed is built in too but hidden behind a sliding frosted door.
The use of aluminium powder coated panels in anthracite grey links the two buildings. It is used on the exterior of the kitchen extension, and a column inside, and forms the facades and walls of the garden studio.
One of Aelia’s favourite details in the studio is the "quaint little window" just above the desk so that she can look out onto the tree which changes colour when the sunlight hits it. Again an anthracite sheet has been added to that section of fence as a backdrop to the tree and uplighters have been installed at its base. "It looks like a framed photograph" she says.
"At night-time when the lamp is on in the studio and the tree is lit up, the house, garden and studio feel like one continuous space," adds Aelia, who is an independent designer and art director (@studioaelia;@weareexposure).
Her heart is in the kitchen though. "I love my kitchen, I spend most of my time in there and sometimes work in it. I knew I wanted a beautiful piece of marble for the worktop and that would be the main focal point – everything else would complement it," she says. The ceramic is called Bianco Fantastico which gives the effect of a bright white Italian marble with a dark vein running through it.
The glazed rear means she can happily "over-cater" for her children and guests in the kitchen and look out onto the garden which has been planted by her green-fingered husband with Pom-Pom trees and ferns around an immaculate lawn, shrouding the plot from neighbours.
Creating a home that expands as the family does, is not just about the four walls and garden. It has enabled the Youngs to stay in an area that they love. "The park [Peckham Rye Park and Common] has changed so much over the past decade with cafes and playgrounds popping up and the whole place becoming more family orientated. We run riot in the park and then retreat and hunker down in our wonderful new space."
