Cedar Clad Modern Home Extension

This home is a cedar clad extension of a duplex in Birmingham. It was built and furnished by Intervention Architecture for an illustrator and earned its name – Illustrator’s Botanical House.

The team opened up the living quarters as much as possible. The light falls from the north-east facing garden and the additional space has a stronger collection with the greenery to the outside. At the rear of the house, a large living, kitchen and dining area fills the full width of the site and leads into the protruding extension with a sliding door. Upstairs is a bedroom and bathroom on the more private first floor, accessed via a staircase in the center of the house.

The extended living areas are translated onto a paved limestone patio through a large bay window and adjacent set of doors. The original wooden frames have been replaced with Crittall-style black aluminum frames, giving the home’s basement a slightly industrial feel. White Formica plywood, concrete countertops, and natural wood finishes are used throughout the living, kitchen, and dining areas, in contrast to the slightly rougher garden room, which is accented by a rich green band around the lower half of the walls.

To further emphasize the indoor/outdoor living space, they used reclaimed, honed hexagonal terracotta tiles in the garden room to add warmth and rough texture to the space between the house and the limestone paving slabs. This use of green accents continues in the master bathroom with aquamarine tiles. Black lights in the bathroom are reminiscent of the black window frames.

A short hallway leads from the front of the house into these new, open spaces, where the interior floors have been chosen to give a sense of continuity. For the flooring, the team suggested a contemporary, longer format of herringbone oak planks for the main room that complemented the smaller existing herringbone blocks in the home’s hallway.

Modern cedar clad timber frame extension on traditional Victorian flooring.
Modern Extensions Design Gallery - Residential Construction and Renovation.
Architects specializing in low-energy design |  house extension.