Upper Gray Sreet

"devon cottage sitooterie"

Devon Cottage is a small scale, single storey late 19th century cottage with rooms in the roof that sits at the end of a terrace of townhouses. The project was to install a small extension to the rear of the cottage, in the northwest corner of the garden that provides a protected entrance porch to the house and to provide a ‘sitooterie’ function to enhance the enjoyment of the garden from a highly glazed, internal space. 

The extension has a contemporary aesthetic to contrast with the traditional cottage. The extension is separated from the cottage by a vertical band of glass and sits on a plinth of charcoal grey brickwork which returns up the east side to form a designed margin at the connection to the random rubble masonry garden wall. The proportioning of the elevations incorporates squares, squares and a half and double squares to give harmony to the compositions and reference the classically proportioned buildings in the vicinity. 

The materials chosen were a through-coloured white render with natural sandstone copes to the masonry elements on the boundary/glass and Scottish larch cladding to the garden elevations.  Render was chosen to reference the diminishing hierarchy of materials from ashlar masonry at the front of the house, through coursed rubble for the side elevations, to lower status render at the rear of the house – a traditional use of materials often found on incrementally extended buildings.

The addition of the small extension improves the amenity of this cottage in several ways.  It allows the client to relate to and appreciate their garden in a way that is appropriate for their current lifestyle. The architecture of the extension was carefully considered to contrast, yet respect the traditional character of the cottage and adjacent buildings and be formed in high quality materials that match and conceptually integrate with the hierarchy of the surrounding built context.