We had a high expectation of craftsmanship, just like the Arts and Crafts designers would have done in their day. We avoided concealing construction behind plaster finishes, choosing to detail the timber roof so that its construction is visible and selecting a relatively light tone brick that’s exposed internally. This extra visibility put pressure on many details that don’t normally concern us like stray fixings passing through roof decks or swags of electric cables normally concealed by plaster board.
As you step into the extension, you pass the tidied up original brick of the external walls. People often forget that bricks were manufactured in plenty of places in Scotland, not just in England. These ones had ’Niddrie’ embossed on the inside face.
Winner of Scottish Design Award 2020 low cost project and commended in the Edinburgh Architectural Association awards 2020 Small Project category.
Built in 1895, the existing Category-B Listed house was designed by Alexander Hunter Crawford – a notable Edinburgh architect at the turn of the twentieth century who would later take over his family’s ‘Crawford’s Biscuits’ company. The house bookends a short terrace of 4 villas, notable for their red brick and mock timber appearance, more suggestive of emerging middle-class English suburbs than the buff sandstone of grandiose Edinburgh.
In the garden room, light-coloured brick complements the existing red brick with both left exposed. Likewise, the timber roof structure is expressed, celebrating its appearance and function. Flitch beams, with slender steel ribbons sandwiched between thick timbers to increase their strength and span, discreetly allow the roof to lift up at the edges, preserving views out to the Firth of Forth. In thoughtfully getting the most from each material, the extension embraces an Arts & Crafts ethos, each element providing clarity of form and construction.
Spilling out from the kitchen, now at the heart of the plan, the house gradually meets the garden through a gentle progression of terraces. Bespoke joinery marks each threshold with seating, steps and storage. The warm pewter of the Architop micro-concrete floor – this product’s first use in a Scottish home – blurs the transition to a Caithness terrace outside.
Care has been taken to bring as much light as possible into the sheltered north-facing extension. The walls and roof were thickened to maximise thermal performance, allowing for a larger glazed area, while the roof steps back from the house to form a rooflight, bringing light deep into the plan.
The offset walls of the dining and living areas shelter an area for the sofa and return to enclose a bookcase – a modern twist on the traditional ‘Edinburgh press’. Off the dining area, a small drinks nook references a panelled recess around the kitchen fireplace. These pockets of space are characteristic of the Arts & Crafts approach, creating intimate moments off the main room.
While the early Arts & Crafts movement was a reaction against the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, Flitch House combines our clients’ appreciation for craft and natural materials with their desire for a ‘smart home’, including wireless lighting and automated blinds. This is Arts & Crafts without the bell pull.
Photography by Angus Bremner, 2019