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Lovely Glass Extension Lights up a London Mews House

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The simplest glass box appears to slice open the ground floor of a semi-detached Victorian house in the West Venice neighborhood in London.

Making no attempt to stay in the character of the original, London-based DOSarchitects simply bring a glass box of plain air and light into the ground floor.

For cramped Londoners, such airy light and space are a real luxury.

The extension transitions between old and new by just reworking the ground floor, where most of the original features had already been replaced by the previous owners anyway.

To create a more family-friendly space in the lower ground floor they eliminated some of the internal partitions so the light is drawn deep in to the old ground floor.

Upstairs, the original antiquity is retained in all its genteel old-world sweetness.

This is where the architects keep some of the splendid features and character that their client had fallen in love when finding the house.

The typical old Victorian claw foot tub gets sympatico new fittings.

New additions in London must solve the problem of how to add to the architecture of former centuries without mixing two ornate styles that clash.

Sometimes the answer is to use the ‘no-style’ of the simplest possible glass box: leaving the ornate original as the only ‘style’ of the building.