London studio Delve Architects has reworked a Victorian home in Camberwell with a cork-clad extension that introduces a brilliant open-plan kitchen and eating area for entertaining.
Appropriately named Camberwell Cork Home, the 20-square-metre extension undertaking replaces an present kitchen and again room that the studio mentioned was “cramped and darkish”.
“The kitchen was small, cramped and darkish, with a small door into the backyard and no visible connection between inside and exterior,” Delve Architects advised Dezeen.
“The intention was to maximise sight traces into the lengthy backyard and herald gentle as a lot as potential.”
Camberwell Cork Home’s eating room now extends out into the backyard, enclosed by massive triple-glazed home windows and a 2.4-metre-high glass door with green-painted frames.
These massive glazed areas focus consideration on the skin whereas permitting westerly gentle to filter into the eating area.
In keeping with Delve Architects, a key transfer to assist make the area really feel brighter and airier was to sink the extension, which required a step down from the principle dwelling areas into the eating space.
“It is among the design rules we suggest for Victorian properties as it might probably usually be achieved with out main structural implications or underpinning – a easy step, however a extremely helpful one,” defined the studio.
Skylights additionally run alongside the size of the extension’s roof to drench the area with gentle from above.
Additional supporting the connection between the house’s inside and the backyard is a stretch of brick paving that runs from the patio and into the kitchen.
One other key aspect of the undertaking was the usage of cork, a renewable materials harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree, which is biodegradable, sturdy and insulating.
The pure materials is used as cladding and insulation, forming a part of a wider design technique centered on minimising carbon emissions and power payments.
Nevertheless, Delve Architects aimed to make sure that its use of this modern materials doesn’t overshadow the present Victorian structure.
Cork cladding is just used on the rear facet of the house, masking the facade of the extension, whereas internally it’s only used as insulation. The extension additionally has a butterfly roof to echo the present streetscape.
Delve Architects, a small studio arrange in 2017 by two faculty pals based mostly in south London, had not labored with the fabric earlier than Camberwell Cork Home.
In keeping with the studio, through the use of it as each exterior cladding and a thermal insulator, the undertaking goals to showcase the potential of cork past aesthetics.
“We wish to present how decarbonising may be accomplished at any scale and beloved the problem of working with this pure materials,” mentioned co-director Alex Raher.
Cork is used as a part of a palette of supplies that had been chosen for both their low U-values or for being environmentally pleasant. Others embody hard-wearing terracotta ground tiles within the kitchen and water-based paints made utilizing clay.
In addition to opening up areas in the back of the terraced home, Delve Architects has launched a utility room and created a comfortable lounge on the entrance of the house.
To create a sense of heat, the partitions and ceiling of the lounge are painted in a wealthy Venetian purple.
Cork is more and more being chosen as a fabric for home structure tasks.
Different cork-clad homes just lately featured on Dezeen embody a house in east London by Polysmiths and a residence by Inês Brandão Arquitectura in Portugal that makes use of the fabric to camouflage into its surrounding panorama.
The images is by Fred Howarth.
