US firm Symantec is a global leader in cyber security software. This speculative project for extending its European headquarters explores the concept of wrapping the existing building in a sinuous membrane supported by a timber structure.

Enlarging the building in this way creates new spaces both around and within it. The modular flexibility of the lightweight membrane can define and enclose areas for many different kinds of functions, for instance, communal dining, breakout and socialising spaces.

Economical to construct, the fluidly contoured addition counterpoints the existing orthogonal volume, expressing a compelling new architectural and corporate identity. [By Catherine Slessor*]

Contract Value £ 6.5M

Location Maidstone, England

Client Kenmore Property Group Ltd

Date 2008

Area 30,000m²

Design Team Paul McAneary Architects

Design Service

Main Contractor N/A

Sub Contractor

The immemorial relationship between sea and shore is explored in this project for a weekend beach house on the south coast of England near Bognor Regis. The clients commissioned a large retreat for entertaining and enjoying the sybaritic delights of seaside life. The imposing, three-storey dwelling steps down to take advantage of a wonderful synthesis of light and views, creating a series of terraces and decks like an ocean liner in full sail.

Spatial organisation is carefully calibrated around the routines of entertaining, sailing and bathing, both in the sea and in the house’s specially-designed swimming pool. Ample car parking and three guest bedrooms accommodate weekend visitors, who are greeted on entry by a spectacular triple-height atrium designed to bring light down into the plan. The main living area is elevated on a first floor piano nobile as a fluid, open-plan space bounded by a huge glass wall overlooking the sea, dissolving the boundary between nature and artifice.

Floors are logically divide according to front and back-of-house functions. Services areas and a boat house are placed on the shore side, with bedrooms and living spaces facing the sea. Details such as a changing and decompression space to prevent sand from being brought into the house, a staircase that acts as a windbreak and a secure plant room that can still be accessed when the owners are away, are all thoughtful responses to the seaside milieu.

Together, they contrive to enhance and elevate the concept of a vacation house in both practical and experiential terms. Though at present the project remains unbuilt, the ideas that informed it fed through into a subsequent scheme for a beach house in Carmel, California. [By Catherine Slessor*]

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A simple lateral living conversion of a top floor flat in Hampstead deftly extends the space available and creates a light filled eyrie for a young French couple. In a common London pattern, the original flat was an unimaginative conversion of the top floor of a house.

The cramped, cellular arrangement has been replaced by a clean open plan, incorporating living, dining and kitchen in a single, fluid volume. A master bedroom is supplemented by a micro-bedroom to provide space for guests

Integrated storage units tactfully strip rooms of clutter and cunning spatial geometry contrives to make things seem bigger than they really are. A staircase connects with a roof terrace, opening up the external realm.

An alternating tread arrangement makes efficient use of the available space and a slim glazed balustrade adds an elegant touch. The contract was completed within a three month timeframe and to streamline communication with the builders, all information was contained within a single drawing.

[By Catherine Slessor*]

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Chariot Oil and Gas is an hydrocarbon exploration company headquartered in London’s Old Bond Street. This remodelling of their Mayfair premises rationalises the existing historic building while adding a series of new elements.

Alluding to the geological strata revealed in oil and gas exploration, subtly striated layers of stone add visual and textural interest to the interiors. As an explicit and poetic expression of Paul McAneary Architects’s concern with materials or ‘substance’ this also has other resonances – the capacity to endure, to be authentic, to lasting, to be timeless, age with grace and use, suffused with a pervading sense of weight and rigour.

Illuminated in a way that dramatically highlights the texture of the stone, the panels form a compelling intervention, powerfully emblematic of the transformation of the interior. [By Catherine Slessor*]

Contract Value Private

Location Mayfair, London

Client Chariot Oil & Gas Ltd

Date 2010

Area 276m²

Design Team Paul McAneary Architects

Supplier Direct Stone, Detail Lighting

An early project that further explores the faceted facade plan form. Our first Faceted House 1 later influenced Faceted House 3.

This project for an internationally famous fashion model and her family extended a handsome existing villa in Notting Hill by adding an extra storey. The house is in a conservation area, so the extension is carefully designed to blend seamlessly with the original architecture.

As well as an attention to detail and creative spatial organisation, the focus of the project was how to finesse the new addition in relation to the planning regulations. This involved having an innate understanding of complex legislation and cultivating productive relationships with the local planning department, while at the same time optimising the client’s spatial and functional requirements. These include a home office and a huge walk-in wardrobe. [By Catherine Slessor*]

Contract Value £ 1M

Location Notting Hill London

Client Private Family

Date 2008

Area 372m²

Design Team Paul McAneary Architects

Design Service

Main Contractor C. Taverner and Son Ltd

Sub Contractor

Supplier

With its headquarters in London and offices overseas, Merchant Bridge is a leading investment firm in oil and gas industries and financial services. The firm occupies the second floor of a 1960s office block and commissioned Paul McAneary Architects to refurbish and reorganise the interior.

The aim was to rationalise the space, but also instill visual interest. Cellular offices are grouped around an open plan area, with glazed partition walls enhancing a sense of connection. Storage, copying and IT areas are tucked into interstitial spaces, ensuring that offices are kept clear of clutter. Small details, such as rounded corners to the non-glazed partition walls, add finesse.

A feature wall of striated stone forms a focal point, its alternately rough and smooth strata alluding to the notion of geological exploration for oil. As one of Paul McAneary Architects’s earliest projects, Merchant Bridge acted as test bed for future work, showing how thoughtful details can elevate an apparently modest commercial interior. [By Catherine Slessor*]

Contract Value £150k

Location Knightsbridge, London

Client Merchant Bridge

Date 2009

Area 316m²

Design Team Paul McAneary Architects

Design Service Interior design, FF&E, building control, lighting design

Supplier Mint

On a challenging corner site in a London conservation area, this project reinterprets the typology of the suburban house to create a new, ecologically responsive dwelling. Experimenting with formal and spatial possibilities, the main volume is aggregated and intersected by two smaller volumes, resulting in a complex, angular roofscape.

Planes of dark brick and frameless glass give the remodelled house a geometrically precise, clean-lined appearance, enhanced by concealed gutters and utilities. Based on Passivehaus design principles, the project is a bold and considered response to the idea of sustainable living.

Environmental control measures include the use of solar panels, a ground source heat pump, highly insulated building fabric and grey water recycling. Technology works in tandem with carbon neutral buildings materials to reduce energy and maintenance costs, providing an efficient and potentially replicable model for a modern, sustainable house. [By Catherine Slessor*]

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Awards

Exhibitions

Press 2016 Sumit Singhal, ‘Pitch- Gable House in London, England by Paul McAnea Architects’, AECCafe, 15 May 2016

This bold remodelling of an Edwardian terraced house within a conservation area in London’s Hammersmith, reconceptualises the conventional notion of the domestic extension. The client requested a contemporary design that blurred the distinction between inside and out, with the garden becoming a continuation of the dwelling space.

Paul McAneary Architects response was to devise an elongated, pavilion-like volume with a 30 degree angle on plan where it meets the garden. Channelling natural light into the interior, this single-storey volume is terminated by a full height glass wall with sliding glass doors held within a crisply faceted zinc facade.

The paved floor of the new extension projects beyond the external wall line to create an outdoor deck, its sharply chamfered profile finessing the transition into the garden. The previously compartmented ground floor of the house is now opened up into a single fluid space, cultivating a sense of physical and perceptual overlapping between indoor and outdoor realms.

Bathed in natural light, the new kitchen-living area expands and transforms the external landscape, while lush planting surrounds and perceptively invades the domestic space through the glass wall and a frameless glass skylight.

Exploring a formal language of solid and void, together with a palette of natural materials designed to improve with age, this project has a rigour and refinement that beautifully demonstrates the transformative potential of architectural imagination. [By Catherine Slessor*]

Contract Value £140k
Location Hammersmith & Fulham, London
Client Private
Date 2008 – 2009
Area 185m²
Design Team Paul McAneary Architects
Design Service Architectural, interior, lighting, kitchen, electrical & mechanical design services, planning consultants/applications, final concept to project completion
Main Contractor Sheppard Construction
Sub Contractor First Glaze Direct
Supplier Rheinzink, Vola, Royal Mosa Tiles
Press 2014 ‘A Contemporary Extension by Paul McAneary Architects’, Contemporist, 26 August 2014, Lindsay Blair, ‘Small Extensions’, Real Homes, August 2014 2013‘Extend your Home’, Grand Designs, July 2013, Jo Messenger, ‘Kitchen Extension’, Real Homes, January 2013, BD New Architects 2013, 2012 Carolina Calzada, ‘SBID International Design Awards – Residential Sector’, SBID, November 2012, Ideal Home, ’Extreme Transformation’, January 2012, The Sourcebook of Contemporary Houses, 2011 Marcelo Seferin, ‘Architect Day: Paul McAneary Architects’, Abuzeedo, 13 September 2011, ’Faceted House 1 by Paul McAneary Architects’, AArchitecture, September 2011, Erika Kim, ‘paul mcaneary architects: tex tonic house 1’, designboom, 27 July 2011, ‘Faceted House 1’, ArchiTonic, July 2011, Claudia Rada, ’Faceted House 1’, Architext, March-April 2011, Alex Nikjoo, ‘Faceted House 1, Hammersmith, London by Paul McAneary Architects’, Architects Journal, 3 February 2017, ’Extensions Special’, Grand Designs, February 2011 ‘Faceted House 1 von Paul McAneary Architects Ltd’, Studio 5555, 25 January 2011, RIBA London Directory 2011, RIBA Interiors Directory 2011, 2010 ’Like New Paul McAneary Architects’, Projectar Casa, December 2010, Laura Galimberti, ‘The garden between the walls’, Design Diffusion News, December 2010, ’Briaunuotas namas’, Centras, December 2010, ’Faceted House 1’, WhoWithWhat.com, October 2010, ’Contemporary Design Faceted House 1 in Hammersmith, London by Paul McAneary Architects’, 20th September 2010, ’Faceted House 1 by Paul McAneary Architects’, architeria.com., 20 September 2010, ’Faceted House 1 by Paul McAneary Architects’, Art you know, September 2010, David McManus, ‘Faceted House, London’, e-architect, 2 June 2010
Awards 2012 SBID – Won Best Residential Space Planning Award 2010 Design Awards – Won Living Space Design of the Year
Exhibitions 2010 New London Architecture ‘Don’t Move, Improve!’