17 Mandeville Road

17 Mandeville Road is a two-storey house located in central Canterbury, adjacent to the Canterbury Conservation Area. Our client required an additional bedroom and living space to meet the needs of a young, growing family.

The existing house is a lovely 1920s semi-detached property, which has retained much of its original character and materiality. Our design makes contemporary, sensitive interventions to extend and reconfigure the property whilst retaining and celebrating this character.

The existing kitchen and dining room to the rear of the property are reconfigured and combined with a single storey extension to form a generous open plan and flexible kitchen, dining and living area. Formed of high-quality brick with a handmade quality, the extension draws on the solid masonry language of the existing house, the asymmetric pitched roof form responding to the proportions of the original facade. Enlarged areas of soldier course brickwork reference the original decorative red brick detailing.

Bi-fold doors maximise natural light and connect the living space with the garden. A separate picture window with an extended stone sill reinterprets the original window detailing to form a window seat within the garden. The location of this window and the internal layout of the spaces is carefully curated to provide a view through the house to the garden as you enter the property.

A second-floor dormer extension converts the existing loft space to create a master bedroom with en-suite bathroom. Generous full height glazed doors with a Juliet balcony take advantage of views across the city towards the Cathedral.

Conceived as an extension of the existing roofscape, the dormer is formed of zinc standing seam cladding, relating to the tone of the existing natural slate tiles. The shadows created by the projecting seam break down the scale of the extension and establish a rhythm of material appropriate to its context.