Tilt Brick House addresses a problem common to many Victorian terraces in London — a rear ground floor made up of poorly performing additions accumulated over time. Here, two separate structures had been built against the back of the house: a blockwork utility room with no insulation, and a glazed conservatory that overheated in summer and lost heat rapidly in winter. Neither worked well, and together they produced an incoherent rear facade with a complicated roofline.

The strategy was consolidation. Rather than demolishing and rebuilding, JHA developed a scheme to over-clad the existing blockwork structure, remove the conservatory, and extend outward to create a single unified rear extension with one homogenous brick facade and a resolved roof. The over-cladding brought the existing wall up to a modern thermal standard, while the new extension was built to match — eliminating the cold bridging, overheating and heat loss that had made the previous rooms unusable for much of the year.

Given constraints on the side boundary, JHA specified ground screws in place of traditional strip or pad foundations. This eliminated the need for excavation close to the boundary, reduced programme time and freed up budget for quality elsewhere in the build — demonstrating how early decisions about buildability can have a meaningful effect on the overall project.

Planning consent was achieved for the full consolidated ground floor extension. The result is a single, well-insulated rear room that performs consistently through all seasons — warm in winter, comfortable in summer — with a considered material palette and a facade that sits confidently in its context.