Designing Semi-detached Homes Design Idea & Example

A corner site offers all sorts of opportunities – it’s up to the architect to make the most of them. The stroke of inspiration here was to create what looked from the front like two pairs of semi-detached houses. But when you turn the corner, it turns out that the corner ‘house’ is actually two flats, one of which you entered at the front and the other at the side. There was room for all five homes to have proper gardens, which is always an excellent thing to be able to provide in London.

At our pre-application meeting, the council agreed that there was nothing wrong with the basic idea of what our client wanted to do. But they weren’t happy with the look of our houses. We really like what we were suggesting – these were exciting, contemporary homes – but we can see how some people might have felt they were too bold an addition to a suburban London street.

So we had another look at the nearby houses to see what elements we could echo and update. We reinterpreted the bay windows found along the street. And we decided to pitch the roofs in a way that made what we were suggesting look like one big building, with similar proportions to the huge semi-detached houses nearby. 

If you take a look at the floorplans, you can see that the houses have very large dual-aspect kitchen-dining-living rooms. And the flats also have good-sized kitchen-diners with plenty of natural light. We think all of these homes will make their residents very happy.