Arches House: what happens when you start with the right question

Project completed 2023. Two-storey side and rear extension with full internal reconfiguration of a Victorian semi-detached house.

The client came to us with a set of drawings already in hand. Another practice had produced them: a rear extension, bi-fold doors, white render, the kind of proposal you see repeated across suburban London with minor variations. It was not badly done. It was just not really designed. It was a solution in the way that a template is a solution, adequate to the brief without ever questioning whether the brief was right.

We asked if they would give us a few weeks before committing to anything. They did. That conversation is where Arches House began.

Aerial evening view of a two-storey brick extension in West Hampstead with arched glazing, outdoor dining terrace, and integrated garden design.

Starting again with the right question

The existing house was a Victorian semi in West Hampstead, solidly built, with the characteristic qualities of its type: good bones, poor layout, a rear elevation that had been added to incrementally and never resolved. The garden was largely cut off from the house. The upper floors were fragmented. The whole building felt like a series of compromises that had accumulated over decades rather than a place that had been thought about as a whole.

The question we kept returning to was not how to extend the house but what the house needed to become. A family home that would work for the next thirty years. Spaces that could absorb children growing up, guests staying, work happening at the kitchen table on a Tuesday morning. A building that would hold its character as the neighbourhood around it changed.

That is a different brief to "add a kitchen extension with bi-fold doors." And it produces different architecture.

Angled rear view highlighting the crafted brickwork, arched openings, and layered massing of Arches House.

The design: a brick pavilion

West Hampstead is Victorian and Edwardian in character, built in brick, with the material texture and tectonic confidence that that period produced almost without thinking. Most contemporary extensions in the area either imitate that character badly or ignore it entirely in favour of something that reads as deliberately neutral.

We wanted to do neither. The extension at Arches House is contemporary in its organisation and detailing, but it takes brick seriously as a structural and expressive material rather than a cladding choice. Deep masonry reveals. Arched openings at ground and upper floor. A gabled central volume with lower horizontal wings to either side, giving the rear elevation a hierarchy and a rhythm that the original building lacked entirely.

The arches are the detail people notice first, and they do carry an obvious historical reference. But their function is as important as their appearance. A deep arched reveal shades the room behind it in summer. It creates shadow lines that make the brickwork read differently at different times of day. It gives the glazing a sense of enclosure and protection that a flush curtain wall never achieves. The house feels, from inside those openings, like it is held by something solid.

Slim steel-framed glazing sits within the masonry, which keeps the openings light without undermining the weight of the wall around them. That balance between solidity and transparency, between a building that has presence and one that connects openly to the garden, was the central design tension we were working with throughout.

Open-plan kitchen and dining space at Arches House, featuring bespoke joinery, natural materials, and generous daylight.

Planning: holding the ambition

A two-storey wraparound extension of this scale attracts scrutiny. The concerns from the planning authority were predictable and legitimate: overall massing, bulk relative to the neighbours, impact on daylight and privacy. These are not bureaucratic objections. They are real considerations that a design has to answer.

Our approach was to develop the evidence rather than reduce the scheme. Detailed daylight and overshadowing studies. Careful analysis of the relationship between the new massing and the neighbouring properties. A considered argument for why the design quality and the contextual response justified the scale being proposed.

This is the part of residential architecture that clients often find opaque and frustrating, and understandably so. Planning in London can feel arbitrary. But in our experience, a well-prepared submission with a coherent design rationale and honest engagement with the concerns raised tends to fare better than a scheme that has been pre-emptively watered down in anticipation of objection. Arches House went through a rigorous process and came out with consent intact. The ambition of the original design is what was built.

Rear garden elevation of Arches House, showcasing the two-storey brick extension with arched steel-framed glazing in West Hampstead. 

Inside: reconfiguring the whole house

The extension was the catalyst, but the project touched all three floors. The existing layout was inefficient in the way that Victorian houses often are when they have been adapted piecemeal: rooms in the wrong places, circulation that worked against the way the family actually lived, storage either absent or improvised.

At ground floor, the new extension opened up an entirely new relationship between kitchen, dining, and garden. A central island anchors the social heart of the plan. The arched openings at full height connect the interior directly to the terrace outside, with a flush threshold that makes the garden feel like a continuation of the room rather than somewhere you step down to.

The upper floors were rebalanced: bedrooms rationalised, bathrooms properly resolved, storage integrated into the fabric of the rooms rather than added on as furniture. The roof space, previously underused, was brought properly into the life of the house.

The interior palette is deliberately restrained. Timber, stone, muted plasters. Materials that will age well and not require reinvention every ten years as tastes shift. We are cautious about interiors that read as contemporary at the expense of longevity. A kitchen that looks exactly of its moment in 2023 will look dated by 2033. These rooms are designed to still feel right in 2043.

Golden hour view of Arches House, capturing the warmth and texture of the brick façade and arched openings.

Performance, without making it the headline

Arches House did not pursue Passivhaus certification. That was not the client's primary goal, and we do not push certification for its own sake. But the performance principles that underpin our low-energy approach were embedded throughout: enhanced insulation in the new envelope, high-performance glazing, improved airtightness where the new construction met the existing building, and a daylighting strategy that reduces dependence on artificial light through most of the working day.

The thermal comfort of the completed building is meaningfully better than what was there before. The new spaces hold their temperature. The glazing does not produce cold downdrafts in winter. The rooflights bring daylight into the centre of the plan without introducing the overheating that poorly specified glazing can cause in summer.

These are not details that photograph well or feature in a planning application. They are the details that determine whether a house is a pleasure to live in or a source of low-level frustration, and they are the ones we pay most attention to.

Evening view of Arches House, with warm internal lighting illuminating the arched brick façade and garden-facing living spaces.

Living with it

The thing we find most satisfying about returning to a completed project is whether it has settled into itself. Some buildings feel finished from the moment they are handed over. Others take a year or two to become what they were always intended to be, as the family occupies the space and the materials begin to acquire the character that only time produces.

Arches House has settled well. The brick is starting to weather in the way that good brickwork does, acquiring a depth of tone that new masonry never has. The garden planting has grown into the terrace, softening the edge between the building and the landscape. The arched openings, which read as bold architectural gestures in the construction photographs, have become simply the windows, the way you look out into the garden, the frame through which the light comes in on a winter morning.

That is what we are aiming for. Not a building that announces itself permanently, but one that becomes, over time, simply the place where a family lives.

Building for the future

At RISE, we believe that extending and transforming a home isn’t just about adding space. It’s about creating lasting value - spaces that support family life, respect their context, and stand the test of time. It’s about thoughtful design, careful planning, and craftsmanship that goes beyond short-term trends.

Projects like Arches House show what’s possible when ambition is guided by experience and integrity - when architecture is shaped by both imagination and responsibility.

Thinking about extending or renovating your home in West Hampstead, Hampstead, or North West London?

Let’s talk about how your home could evolve - beautifully, responsibly, and with confidence.

→ Email us at architects@risedesignstudio.co.uk
→ Or call the studio on 020 3947 5886

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