Flaxman Road, Lambeth

A budget conscious opening out of a basement flat in South London. A steel structure has been designed to minimise cost and to work within the constraints of Party Wall Awards whilst still providing more generous living spaces. An existing slender lightwell is to be enlarged by use of a reinforced concrete tray, allowing sunlight into the basement rooms and providing a sheltered and private external terrace. The raw finishes of the concrete are to be left at the initial stage with the potential to layer finer materials over these surfaces, allowing for more personalisation with time. The concrete shuttering is to imprint the surface with rivulets and channels to encourage the growth of climbing plants grown from pockets of earth revealed through holes and slots in the floor surface of the terrace.