Terraced houses in London are among the most tightly constrained building types in residential architecture. Their narrow plots, party walls, and strict planning rules leave architects little room for structural invention, which is exactly why Studio McW's intervention in Clapham feels so striking. Rather than wrapping a conventional timber or steel extension around the back of the property and calling it done, the studio inserted a raw concrete frame that runs through the full depth of the house, replacing failing structure and generating new volumes from ground to roof.

The result, completed in 2020, is Framework House: 172 square metres of refurbished and extended living space organized around a monolithic precast concrete staircase, top-lit voids, and a flipped ground floor plan that puts dining in the bay window and the living room at the rear, opening directly onto a generous courtyard garden. The brief came from a family moving out of a flat who wanted to keep the lateral, open feeling of apartment life while gaining the vertical space a house provides. Studio McW answered that request by treating the concrete skeleton not as something to hide but as the primary architectural event.

A Quiet Front, a Structural Reveal Behind

Street facade with white stucco and arched windows framed by mature tree

Courtyard view through sliding glass doors revealing white interior volumes beneath a linear skylight

Full-height window framing courtyard with weathered brick wall and planted bed

From the street, Framework House is indistinguishable from its neighbors. The white stucco facade, arched windows, and mature planting preserve the Victorian character of the terrace. Step around to the rear, however, and the project reveals its hand. Sliding glass doors open to the courtyard beneath a linear skylight, exposing the concrete beams and white interior volumes that define the extension. The contrast is deliberate: the house performs the conservation role the street demands while pursuing a completely different structural language inside.

The full-height window at the transition point between old house and new extension frames a weathered brick boundary wall and planted bed beyond, turning the courtyard into a borrowed landscape that deepens the ground floor perspective. It is a simple device, but it works because the depth of the plan has been reorganized so that the widest section sits at the back, pulling light and garden views into the space where the family actually gathers.

The Concrete Stair as Centerpiece

Interior room with concrete staircase and white kitchen volume beneath linear skylights

Concrete staircase with vertical black metal slat balustrade and metal handrail beside white cabinetry

Concrete staircase with glass and metal guardrail descending to herringbone timber floor

The staircase is the project's most physically impressive element. Cast as three precast segments that were craned in through the roof light and joined by an in-situ landing at first floor level, it descends through the house in a sculptural sweep. The concrete is left raw, its formwork texture visible, paired with a vertical black metal rod balustrade and a dark steel handrail. Against the herringbone timber floor and white joinery, the stair reads as an insertion rather than a background feature.

Studio McW made the unusual decision to collaborate with a contractor who had never worked with concrete before, which speaks to the practice's confidence in its detailing and specification. The precast elements arrived on site precisely dimensioned; the formwork itself was cleaned and reused elsewhere in the build to minimize waste. There is a satisfying honesty to the approach: no applied finishes, no cladding, just the material doing its job and showing you how.

Light from Above

Looking up concrete stairwell with vertical timber cladding and skylight above

Top-down view of vertical timber slat wall with exposed concrete beams and skylight above

View of concrete stair landing with vertical black metal balustrade and glass guardrail below

Narrow terraced houses depend on borrowed light, and Framework House gets this right through a series of overhead glazing elements. The stairwell is capped by a generous skylight that washes the vertical timber cladding and concrete surfaces in diffused daylight. Looking up from the ground floor, the stair becomes a light well, pulling brightness down through the center of the plan where side windows cannot reach.

The vertical timber slat wall that lines parts of the stair volume serves a dual purpose. It conceals cabling and pipework within its depth while providing a warm, rhythmic texture against the cool concrete. The interplay of materials here is carefully calibrated: concrete beams read as horizontal lines, timber slats as vertical ones, and overhead glass dissolves the ceiling plane. It is one of those sectional moments where you can feel the architect thinking in section rather than in plan.

Kitchen as Connective Spine

Kitchen island with dark cabinetry beneath concrete beam looking toward rear door

Kitchen corner showing concrete beam spanning across white cabinetry with dark countertop

View through kitchen toward courtyard with planted greenery beyond glass doors

The ground floor plan has been inverted from the traditional terraced arrangement. Where the parlour or living room would typically sit at the front, Studio McW placed the dining area within the bay window, tucking it into the most characterful part of the existing envelope. The kitchen then occupies the center of the plan, acting as a connective spine between dining at the front and living at the rear. It is a layout borrowed from apartment thinking, where circulation and cooking overlap rather than being separated by corridors and doors.

The Poggenpohl kitchen itself is restrained: dark cabinetry, a dark countertop on a substantial island, and white upper volumes. The concrete beams span across overhead, their soffits just above head height, creating a compression that makes the release into the rear living room and courtyard beyond feel more dramatic. It is not a showy kitchen; it is a well-proportioned room where structure does the work of decoration.

Courtyard and Rear Garden

Rear courtyard terrace with buff brick walls and planted bed with greenery

Rear courtyard with weathered brick boundary wall and planted metal planter boxes

The rear courtyard is a compact but effective outdoor room. Buff brick walls and weathered boundary masonry define its edges, while metal planter boxes introduce greenery at a scale that suits the space without trying to imitate a suburban garden. The planting is restrained, almost Mediterranean in its palette, and the hard landscaping is simple enough to function as an extension of the living room floor plate when the sliding glass doors are open.

What makes this courtyard work is its proportional relationship to the rear extension. Because Studio McW widened the plan at this point, the living room and garden read as a single zone rather than a corridor leading to a patch of green. The threshold is almost seamless, and on a London summer evening, the distinction between inside and out collapses entirely.

Joinery and Material Restraint

Full-height white storage wall with jointed panels flanked by concrete structure

Corner of white room with floor-to-ceiling sliding panels framed in timber edging

Interior view showing concrete steps leading to a corridor with vertical slat paneling

The bespoke joinery by Hexagon is worth noting for its discipline. Full-height white storage walls are composed of flush, jointed panels that absorb the visual noise of domestic storage. Sliding panels with timber edging close off rooms without the weight of hinged doors, reinforcing the lateral openness the clients wanted. The matte black metalwork throughout, from stair balusters to door hardware, acts as a consistent graphic line against the white and grey palette.

Studio McW made a deliberate effort to eliminate redundant construction materials and unnecessary finishes. Wall and ceiling infills conceal services but do so within the structural logic of the concrete frame rather than as applied layers. The herringbone timber floors by Havwoods provide warmth underfoot without competing with the concrete above. The material hierarchy is clear: concrete is the protagonist, timber is the supporting character, and everything else steps back.

Plans and Drawings

Ground floor plan drawing showing a curved bay window and stair with adjacent rooms

Concrete stair with vertical metal rod balustrade and dark handrail beneath sloped ceiling

The ground floor plan reveals the logic of the flipped arrangement. The curved bay window at the front accommodates the dining area, while the stair sits centrally, dividing the plan between the kitchen spine and the circulation core. Adjacent rooms open through generous apertures rather than conventional doorways, maintaining sightlines from front to back. The plan is tight, as any London terrace plan must be, but the proportional intelligence is evident in the way each zone gets the width and light it needs without corridors consuming usable space.

Why This Project Matters

Framework House is a lesson in what happens when you treat a domestic refurbishment as a structural project rather than a decorative one. The decision to expose the concrete frame, to celebrate its weight and texture rather than conceal it behind plasterboard, gives a standard London terrace a spatial and material identity that most renovations never achieve. It also proves that ambitious materiality does not require an unlimited budget; it requires conviction in the design and a willingness to eliminate everything that does not serve the idea.

For architects working on narrow, constrained urban sites, the project offers a transferable strategy. Flip the plan to put communal life where the best light and proportion exist. Use structure as finish. Let overhead glazing do the heavy lifting in deep plans. And trust that a carefully detailed raw material will age better and mean more than any applied surface. Studio McW has delivered a house that is genuinely tough and genuinely refined at the same time, which is a rare combination in residential work anywhere, let alone in a Victorian terrace in Clapham.

Framework House by Studio McW, Clapham, London, United Kingdom. 172 m². Completed 2020. Structural engineer: Blue Engineering. Joinery: Hexagon. Concrete: White and Reid. Flooring: Havwoods. Metalwork: Sunbeam Group. Kitchen: Poggenpohl. Photography by Rory Gardiner.

About the Studio

Studio McW

Official website of Studio McW, one of the studios behind this project.

studiomcw.co.uk

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.