Focus on the sky garden: how gaming technology helped this east London couple double the size of their dream home

Entrusting an architecture professional to convert or build you a home is a big, expensive step. However, you are also expecting them to create something you are really going to enjoy living in.

Architectural designer Ran Ankory, 44, co-director of Scenario Architecture in Islington, is fascinated by the effect a house can have on its inhabitants and concentrates on tailor-making homes, with meticulous attention to detail.

He put his distinctive approach into practice in 2013 when a couple with a toddler, whom he had met at the school gates, asked him to do their house.

They’d bought an uninhabitable Nineties live/work shell in a terrace in east London. It had a ground floor and beneath sloping eaves were a mezzanine room and basic bathroom. The interiors were rudimentary and there was no outside space.

The building was mainly made from concrete blocks, with a corrugated roof. The couple, an artist and an academic, wanted to enlarge it into a proper family home.

They were living in a small flat in Hackney and wanted a bigger family. Their new purchase had planning permission in place for a full-size first floor, plus a further floor and a roof terrace.

Ran asks people to write down “scenarios” that chart everything they do during the day, noting things they’d really like from their new home.

“Put down dreams, aspirations, feelings. If you would like to see the garden when you are in the shower, say so,” he says.

“Sometimes 10 pages of writing come back, which some architects would hate, but I’m very happy with.”

The couple’s written ideas showed that the only thing they actually liked about their existing small flat was the garden, so for the new home, creating a private, secluded garden — in this case it could only be on the roof — was essential.

Gaming technology and 3D modelling, resulting in 3D computer models with little figures, means you can see how everything works. Scenario now uses virtual reality, too, so you can “roam around” inside your prospective home.

The couple’s new home has three full-size floors plus a large cedar-clad roof terrace. The ground floor is given over to a high-spec self-contained two-bedroom flat to let out.

The upper two floors are the house proper, with three bedrooms and a bathroom on the lower floor, from which a wide, curvy, staircase sashays up to a vast, sunny living room with a corner kitchen. Over the sleek kitchen, steps rise to the decked roof terrace.

In their flat the couple had loved seeing the garden out of the windows, so in the new house, a large corner section of the terrace was sunk down inside the flat, with glass walls all round it — almost as if a big corner square of the terrace has gone down three feet in a glass-sided lift. This means that part of the garden is visible at any time from the living room, along with sky. And the glass sides pull light in.

From the terrace, a few broad steps lead down to this little private patio, and double as casual seating. The clever design means that the living area is always in touch with the sky garden.

The planners passed the design and demolition began at the end of July 2014. After the building was gutted, the builders did the whole thing in 17 weeks.

The old concrete walls were replaced by brick and timber.

The upper living level got a smart, grey vinyl floor because a trendy polished concrete one would have been too heavy and thick on the joists, but the kitchen and window seat have concrete tops cast on site.

Big pocket doors slide across a study and a child’s play area, for some private places. The curvaceous central staircase creates enhanced flow, and it’s practical because there are no space-wasting corridors. A top-spec misting system gives fire protection.

White walls and bespoke bookshelves complete the elegant, simple, sunny look — but it is the glass views and connection to the roof terrace that really amaze.

This clever idea has given this couple what they most wanted — constant views to that longed-for garden — as well as twice as much space as they originally bought, and more light than they ever imagined.

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