Mount Park House

Mount Park House is a substantial Victorian house in West London with a north-facing garden. Like many houses of its type, it had well-proportioned, light and spacious living rooms at the front but small, dark kitchen spaces at the back. With older sons in higher education and starting their careers, the family gathered in the kitchen in the evenings, yet it was one of the smallest rooms in the house. Paul Archer Design's task was to make a new space that could be the family's focal point, set around cooking and eating.

The project comes in two parts, an extension and a garden pavilion, each facing the other across the lawn. The kitchen projects out into the garden, with a Corian worktop carried from inside to outside and a glass wall that slides into the worktop, so that cooking feels like cooking in the garden. The pavilion adds an actual outdoor kitchen, and a south-facing patio with a timber trellis to sit out and enjoy the sun, since the main house itself faces north and is oriented towards views of the garden rather than sitting out.

Inside, the extension holds three key spaces, kitchen, sitting and dining, arranged so the family can socialise across all three. A level change of a few steps leads back up to the older house, a subtle differentiation between old and new that also gives the rooms deeper in the house better views out through the extension. The garden pavilion doubles as an art studio, with garden storage tucked around the back behind a full-width roller shutter that rolls up to reach a one-metre-deep shed.

Architecture by Paul Archer Design, with garden design by Conker Gardens. Photography by Marcus Peel.