THIS WEEK’S FEATURED project shows how the careful consideration of landscape design while renovating your house can extend your extension even further.

Source: Alice Clancy via Donal Colfer

With this South Dublin house, architect Donal Colfer created a light and airy extension by removing an existing renovation that wasn’t letting light into the house and replacing it with a “more open plan layout with oak flooring and bespoke fitted furniture units acting to blur the meeting of new and existing structures”.

Source: Alice Clancy via Donal Colfer

Donal’s objective with the new extension was “to create the impression that the new spaces had always been part of the existing dwelling”.

Source: Alice Clancy via Donal Colfer

The next design consideration was to create a harmonious look and feel between the interior and exterior and this was achieved by “a large bespoke oak-framed glazed screen allowing the new living spaces to extend into the garden”.

Source: Alice Clancy via Donal Colfer

While the new extension helped to create a larger space in the home it only becomes apparent there there is a new brick addition when you enter the garden. Here, “fair-faced concrete elements are used… to separate old and new”.

Source: Alice Clancy via Donal Colfer

It’s easy to create an extra ‘room’ in your garden by replicating and mimicking the materials used internally for your external space.

This is reinforced through common timber floor finishes internally and externally.

Timber decking and cast insitu concrete details make unobtrusive and harmonious additions to the back garden and help to continue the feel of the indoors, outdoors.

Source: Alice Clancy via Donal Colfer

In a further effort to create harmony between external and internal and also to create the appearance of more space, “the rear garden is also sunken to again give the feeling of a larger scale in a modest space”.

So there you have it, clean lines and light material both inside and out and you’ve got an extra room with your renovation.

See more of  Donal Colfer’s projects on his website here>

See more of photographer Alice Clancy’s work here>

Running out of space? Add an extra storey. 

Mixing the modern with historical is a perfect combination