Although located off a quiet Victorian square surrounded with mature trees, the back garden felt uncomfortably overlooked and exposed to view from existing apartments adjoining the rear boundary wall. This is a project that is at its heart about framing space, about emphasis and exclusion. The inspiration is Vavasour Square itself, and how the marking of an open space with a geometry (a square) gives heightened presence to the space marked within that geometry, and equally diminishes that which lies outside the geometry.

A further ambition of the project is to re-instate the axial plan layout facing the square countered with a new more informal plan configuration facing the garden, anchored around a concrete hearth.  A new family room and home office in timber to the rear exploits its south facing garden aspect, seeking to capture something of the secluded atmosphere of the front square, in time.