Architecture update

On the lookout

This new home is tailor-made for Jim and Liz Meier’s retirement, and replaces a 1970s house close to the water in Milford on Sea, Hampshire. The two-storey, 350sqm design by OB Architecture, which has four bedrooms and cost £950,000, is wrapped in sandstone and Siberian larch to resist the harsh coastal conditions. Inside there are wide corridors and a lift, and the layout includes a first-floor kitchen and living room opening to a big balcony with sea views. The house is warmed by an air-source heat pump and is almost entirely powered by solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. (obarchitecture.co.uk)

Crafting an expansion project

In remodelling and extending a three-bedroom 1940s semi in Richmond, southwest London, practice Woodrow Vizor Architects increased the living space to 143sqm from 97sqm for an outlay of £280,000. Tristan and Liz Thornhill and their son gained an attic conversion en-suite bedroom and a timber-frame extension on the ground floor with an open-plan living room, kitchen and dining area. The project’s space-saving bespoke joinery includes a built-in dining bench and a study that can be hidden behind sliding and folding plywood doors. (woodrowvizor.co.uk)

Waste not, want not

Offcuts of oak from Danish flooring manufacturer Dinesen (dinesen.com) clad the walls and roof of a 140sqm timber-framed house near Lillesand on the southeastern coast of Norway. Built by practice Kolman Boye as a holiday retreat for a family of four with a budget of around £870,000, the three-bedroom, single-storey structure recycles timber that would have been burnt as firewood, helping it blend into the forest. (kolmanboye.se)

Glass and a half

A two-storey steel-framed extension with glazing on the ground floor and larch cladding above doubles the living space of a farmstead near Malton in North Yorkshire. Built by Vine Architecture for George MacNicol and Millie McCallum, who have three children, the new spaces provide an open-plan kitchen, dining and living room on t