James Alder Architects has completed a south London house extension that includes rooms for gardening and bicycle maintenance as well as a new family kitchen.

Alder’s London- and Copenhagen-based studio designed the generous Tabberner Cook House extension for the home of a family of four in Crystal Palace.

A timber waffle-slab provides the gridded ceiling of the extension

Wrapping the rear and side of the house, the 57-square-metre addition goes beyond the typical London extension, giving its owners dedicated spaces for outdoorsy hobbies.

The most prominent is the indoor “potting shed”, which offers plenty of space for nurturing plants and storing tools. It includes an oak-framed greenhouse cabinet, which opens from both this room and the kitchen.

An oak-framed greenhouse cabinet connects the potting room with the kitchen

Planters are also integrated in other spaces, lining the edges of the kitchen and forming the stepped levels of a new patio terrace.

The workshop slots in behind the potting room, giving the family space to store and service their bicycles, while other additions include a WC, a pantry and a small utility room.

A drain is built into the potting room’s brick floor to allow easy watering

“The brief was to form a series of very generous living spaces that were to be deeply integrated with both the garden and with gardening,” Alder told Dezeen.

“They also wanted a series of ancillary spaces that would allow for their interest in biking to be properly serviced, and to free up the ground floor by providing a lot of storage to the newly designed kitchen.”

A secondary entrance allows direct access to the bike workshop and potting room

The materials palette needed to suit the messy nature of these spaces, without making living spaces feel too utilitarian.

Alder solved this by choosing durable materials in pale tones, giving the extension a lighter aesthetic than the dark bricks and slate roof of the main house.

White brickwork and zinc cladding give the extension its light appearance

White bricks form interior and exterior walls, as well as the stepped terrace and site boundary wall. Above it, whitened glulam timber forms an exposed waffle-slab ceiling with integrated skylights.

The upper walls and roof are externally wrapped in zinc panels that were produced on-site, matching the aluminium-framed glazing that forms two distinct bands around the rear and side elevations.

“The natural zinc will slowly patina in time, forming a subtle, varied texture to the upper facades,” said Alder.

“Very large areas of the southwest-facing facade are also openable, to allow for variations in use.”

The extension opens out to a stepped terrace at the rear

“This allows for the whole of the ground floor extension, depending upon its desired function, to act more broadly as a greenhouse throughout, giving the inhabitants the choice as to how much of the interior space is given over to horticulture or not,” Alder continued.

The interiors are equally robust, with a polished concrete floor in the kitchen, and strip drains built into the floors of the workshop and potting room to allow for bike washing and plant watering.

Skylights allow daylight to penetrate deep into the house

Other details include a custom-designed steel handrail, located alongside a staircase that signals the one-metre drop down from the pre-existing dining room to the kitchen.

A matching staircase was also installed along the side of the house, where a secondary entrance allows direct access to the workshop and brick-floored potting room.

A custom-designed steel handrail is installed alongside a brick staircase

The project is the largest that Alder has completed since founding his studio in 2000, after previously collaborating with London-based Thom Brisco on projects such as the office of recruitment agency Represent.

He sums up the approach as  “a focus on detail, a deliberate honesty and a celebration of stark, layered construction”.

The photography is by Johan Dehlin.

Project credits:

Architect: James Alder Architects
Structural engineer: Ameet Mistry, Three Six Design
Main contractor: Techneco
Contractor team: Lucan Fleet, Lee Harfleet, Travior Palmer, Cain Fleet, Barry Murphy, Sean Jackman, Michael Davidson
Building control: Assure Building Control
External zinc facade: Modtrad Zinc Roofing
Handrail fabricator: AD Metalwork Solutions
Internal timber window fabricator: Interfusion Joinery
Window and door fabricator and installer: Bespoke Windows & Doors RG
Window and door supplier: Cortizo
Concrete flooring: Lazenby
Kitchen designer: James Alder Architects
Kitchen fabricator: Naked Kitchens

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