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Jaymi Sudra: The Extended Family Home

Folio

Alleviating the pressures of overcrowded homes and improving the typology of the terrace

Above the site, a tapestry of private gardens form a new green roof scape. Internal courtyards create porosity, revealing glimpses into the lives of inhabitants.
Looking through one courtyard to another, new entrances formed within the timber extensions front onto a sheltered social space. A lightweight steel walkway provides a new route to the first floor housing.
An intimate ground floor bedroom, conceived between two painted brick party walls. New timber structure and inserted joinery elements add warmth, softness and complexity
Internal courtyards are carefully curated to allow light into the dense ground floor plan
A variety of layouts speculate the different needs of a diverse range of family types. Bedrooms occupy the majority of the ground floor. Which is imagined as a series of intimate rooms, receiving soft light through internal light-wells
Open plan activities are oriented around the central light-well. Which also opens up vertical views through the home, and to the roof gardens above.
Looking through the living spaces, an internal light well draws light from above and expands the feeling of space. Shutters mediate privacy between the adjacent courtyards. Materials are natural, domestic and robust
This courtyard utilises recycled brick from the partial demolition of existing homes on the site.

Location
Leather Gardens, Stratford, Newham

Objective
To improve the provision of affordable housing through a diverse offering of typologies that empower modern-day families and multi-generational households in contested space.

Motivation
To improve the mental health and well-being of residents by transforming the quality of their spaces. The nature of the home should be adaptable and responsive to the ever evolving needs of the family, in contrast to homes that were built for the limited definition of the ‘nuclear family’.

Strategy
1. To create a lightweight flexible framework structure that can enable the existing footprint of terrace housing to be extended. Vertical and horizontal expansion accommodates changing needs for the home’s capacity.
2. To limit demolition, while improving the urban grain with new defined routes amongst a denser street level condition.
3. To carve voids in dwellings for internal courtyards and light into their densified volumes..

Impact
Residents have a new found spatial and domestic agency. They are able to redefine their homes in response to their changing needs. This attitude to dwelling reinforces the importance of adaptability and evolvability in architecture.

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