Name: Gresford Architects
Price range: $

Traditional-style house with a landscaped garden, swimming pool, and outdoor seating, architecture by Gresford Architects.

Interior dining area with large glass doors opening to a garden and pool, featuring modern lighting and cozy fur-covered chairs, architecture by Gresford Architects.

Living room with a grey sofa, armchair, wooden coffee table, and wall-mounted TV, open to a dining area. Natural light, neutral tones, and architecture by Gresford Architects.

A large white house with a red tile roof, surrounded by greenery and trees, with a gravel driveway; architecture by Gresford Architects.

Living room with a wood-burning stove, wooden floor, chairs, artwork, and a staircase, architecture by Gresford Architects.

Aerial view of a large property with three houses surrounded by tall trees and lush greenery, with a gravel driveway, landscape gardens, and distant fields. Architecture by Gresford Architects.

Interior dining area with a rustic console table, green plants, framed artwork, and a large window with greenery outside, architecture by Gresford Architects.

Bright, open living room with light wooden flooring, white walls, cozy seating, plants, and artwork, with an aperture showing a kitchen area; architecture by Gresford Architects.

This 1930’s home in a leafy suburb of Oxford, was bought by the clients in a state of some disrepair, having had only two owners since it was built. The house had suffered an unfortunate series of extensions, and the internal spaces were dark and gloomy.

The brief to Gresford Architects was to significantly extend the living accommodation, in a manner sympathetic to the existing, beautiful art-nouveau style of the original dwelling. The key conceptual driver was to remove the cramped staircase and entrance, creating a new front door with a double height entrance hall, with a first floor landing from which all 5 bedrooms open, thus creating a space of community and accidental interactions.

On the ground floor a new kitchen and dining area were created at the east of the house, with the dining pavilion itself extending to the rear of the house in as a more modernist space, opening up to the garden and funky 1970’s swimming pool.