The project involves the reconfiguration and extension of an existing detached villa in North Belfast. The client, an artist, had a further ambition to create a new studio in a secluded spot at the bottom of their long, narrow garden. The extended living spaces and the new studio building would relate across the length of the garden via their mutual materiality of blackened timber.

Key aspects of the brief were to facilitate a new public entrance for future painting classes, whilst ensuring that there was an appropriate layer of privacy to the front garden and existing front facing living rooms, without compromising their internal quality. The existing lack of a hallway needed reconfigured to allow a more appropriate threshold sequence from entrance through to family spaces.