Architects Chiswick
Architects Chiswick
Architects Chiswick
About us
This dip in the Thames is where you want to be for quiet residential living and easy access to the West Country. Chiswick, with its green parks and varied architecture –including one of the loveliest Palladian stately homes in the region – also connects swiftly to Heathrow Airport and Central London, via the District Line. Residential plots are blessed with gardens, off-street parking and mature trees.
Our unique style of residential architecture does the homes of Chiswick justice, opening up heritage buildings with efficient, light-bathed layouts that adhere to the local regulations and respect the local vernacular.
Scenario Architecture works collaboratively with all our clients to translate the beloved period architecture of this neighbourhood into homes that work for them. With our long history working alongside planning departments across London, we can realise your vision and ours, at a price you can afford. Years of experience have made our boutique residential architecture practice one of the most coveted in the city.
We set up Scenario in 2007 with a unique vision: to marry our passion for heritage architecture with a new, distinctive approach to contemporary design. From the very start we collaborated with our clients, putting their ambitions and their unique lifestyles at the forefront of our striking living spaces. Our clients’ needs are still central to every design.
A highly functional contemporary home must be the product of a deep connection between architect and homeowner. Scenario’s tailor-made homes reflect their lifestyle, their stories, their dreams.
Our landmark project Scenario House was shortlisted for the RIBA London Awards in 2018. We hold it up as a model of our commitment to breathing new life into period properties. Chiswick homeowners looking for a residential architect should examine its fresh, customised approach to a typical London home.
Your Chiswick project
We’ve drawn up this illustrated synopsis to help you understand what it means to hire an architect for your residential project, whether you’re planning an extension, renovation or new-build. Be aware that most architectural undertakings in Chiswick require planning and building approval from the London Borough of Hounslow. Ask us about our successful record securing planning permission on behalf of our clients. We can help you navigate that process, working alongside Hounslow officials to see through your application.
Tip
Discover if your chosen architect has success steering planning applications through London councils. Visit the London Borough of Hounslow website, click on “Planning and building” and search for planning applications with the name of your architect.
Architects Chiswick
Architects Chiswick
Scenario is an established architecture practice focusing on contemporary residential design. We take on projects of every scale and scope, from home refurbishment, renovation and expansions to new-builds.
Working with Scenario Architecture
We specialise in domestic architecture on all scales and scopes. Our boutique studio in London offers a bespoke architecture service with a team of experienced, highly skilled architects to tackle your refurbishment, full renovation or new-build. Our RIBA Chartered Practice complies with the strict health and safety criteria of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
More than a decade in the business has taught us that virtual reality and real-time visualisations are the most efficient tools for seeing through a project, choosing the right fixtures and fittings and simulating natural light. As such, we use innovative 3D design technology on all our projects. This Chartered Institute of Building case study features a Scenario project and demonstrates the great benefits of advanced 3D design technology for residential architecture.
We put our clients first, collaborating with them on drawings, detail design, planning, tender and construction. We aim to complete all our projects on time and to budget. If you are looking for an architect in Chiswick or West London, look over our online portfolio of residential projects.
Architects Chiswick
In our client's words
Architects Chiswick
Great ideas and vision to help with our substantial improvement of a Victorian terrace. In our experience Scenario's method prioritises the final result. That may mean more professional fees or higher quotes from contractors, as they understand the exact requirements.
Architects Chiswick
Great, professional service. Good drawings and models and ultimately passed planning at the first attempt with Hackney Council. Would certainly recommend!
Architects Chiswick
Scenario Architecture have created an outstanding design and space that was beyond my expectations. The design was through their unique process of understanding the client’s daily scenarios and collaborating with the client to come up with a unique design. The design process is one of the most memorable parts of the process and they also stretched my existing ideas to help create this unique space. A stress free journey throughout the whole process which Scenario were indispensable by giving advice on many difficult design and build decisions.
Architects Chiswick
We wanted to renovate our house in a conservation area in central London. Given this involved a complete demolition and new build with an extra floor on top, getting planning approval was always going to be tricky. Scenario did an amazing job on the new house 'envelope' and throughout the planning phase. We couldn't have wished for better from them and having succeeded in gaining planning approval owe them a very big 'thank you'.
Architects Chiswick
Scenario were great at thinking imaginatively and coming up with a design for a ground floor extension that was more ambitous than other architects we spoke to. They also helped us find a contractor who was able to complete the project working within timescale and our tight budget. I would recommend for mid to large sized projects with sufficient budget to allow for full utilisation of their creativity.
Further Reading
Commuters who only know Chiswick by the landmark Fuller’s Brewery off the Great West Road aren’t getting the full picture of this leafy enclave on the Thames. Fuller’s is a vestige of the long local tradition of brewing, due to bumper barley crops close to a source of flowing water. The mix of rural and village life has long attracted people here, to the join the fishermen based down at the river.
Like many London neighbourhoods it began with a church – in this case the Gothic, gas-lit St Nicholas’ church – serving a small, low-rise village of family cottages on narrow brick streets. Unlike many London neighbourhoods, however, the village atmosphere has hardly waned. Modern Chiswick is an amalgamation of similar low-rise villages with very light development throughout the 20th century. Not even the office buildings of Chiswick High Road, nor the two major thoroughfares running across the peninsula have done much to dent its charm.
South of the Great West Road are the oldest streets with their mix of sober dark-brick Georgians, broad Arts and Crafts family homes and flamboyant Victorians with frilly iron detail. They lead out toward the Thames, which around here is edged by flowering bushes and mature trees, wisteria and lilac and visited by Canada Geese. An oblong island in the river beyond Chiswick Mall is an overgrown nature reserve, green all year long. Any new housing looks to the past for inspiration and blends in reasonably well. Wealthy citizens over the past few hundred years built grand manors within easy reach of the Thames, most of which have been demolished but serve as inspiration for an affluent community. The surviving Palladian villa Chiswick House is like a European escape beyond the bustle of the M4 motorway, with gilded state rooms, sumptuous wallpapers and a heavenly central dome. It once belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, big landowners in the area.
The slow lifestyle in Chiswick today features river-walks following Strand-on-the-Green, park escapes and meals in the heritage, high-ceiling pubs on the High Road. Settle into one of the shady streets south of the High Road and an architect well versed in updating period homes can open up, expand and renovate your red-brick Victorian or mock Tudor. Many of these terrace and semi-detached houses have set the local trend with double-height rear extensions, expanded kitchens, sun rooms, loft conversions, basement conversions and side-return extensions. Many more have opened up a dated layout to make better use of the historic bones. Spend a day discovering the neighbourhood’s ins and outs to get a better idea of the local traditions.
Advice
View AllFrequently Asked Questions
- As a dynamic practice operating in London’s premium residential market, managing projects remotely and conducting virtual meetings was a very familiar territory for us, long before the pandemic began and ‘working remotely’ became the norm.
- Our clients have very busy lifestyles and may move between several different locations, both within the UK and beyond, during the lifecycle of a typical project.
- To accommodate such client needs and enable us to run their projects smoothly we had all the technology and know-how associated with remote working in place for several years.
- Read our full (Virtual) Process
- Scenario based design – We start each and every project with a meticulous analysis of our client’s vision, requirements and aspirations. We do this by asking our clients to imagine their everyday scenarios living in the completed house and describe their desired interaction with it.
- Uniquely interactive - Our client’s deep involvement in the process does not stop with completion of the brief. Our design meetings are highly interactive, informal and fun.
- Designed to reflect you – Based purely on your lifestyle, aspirations and requirements and free from externally imposed concepts, metaphors and pre-conceptions, a completely fresh and unique design will gradually emerge and it will tell your story not ours.
- Collaborative – We start the conversation with planners early and advise most of our clients to seek pre-planning advice prior to submission of a full planning application. Our experience shows that when properly consulted and liaised with, most planning case officers will be receptive to conduct a professional dialogue, increasing chances of successes.
- Strategic – We tailor a custom planning strategy for each project based on its circumstances such as planning history, local context and specific challenging elements. We sometimes split applications or introduce minor tweaks to the scheme during the consideration period in conversation with the officers to prevent one contentious element from jeopardising approval of the main scheme.
- Professional – Our experience shows that the quality and clarity of the submission in terms of background research, planning history of the property and context, precedent and of course the arguments presented to support the case has a tremendous effect on success rate.
- The decision period clock only starts ticking once the application is validated by the Council, This requires then to check that the forms are completed correctly and that the submission contains all the necessary drawings, statements and reports.
- Although required by law to provide a decision within the statutory eight weeks period, it is not uncommon for councils to miss the deadline of the consideration period, normally only by a few days, sometimes longer.
- In some cases the council may ask us as your agent for an extension of time, this may be requested due to internal reasons or as an acceptable result of a professional discussion that we are conducting with them about certain aspects of the application that they are not sure about.
- Our experience shows that planning officers respond better to projects when they feel consulted and collaborated with. We find that when we truly listen to their often helpful and valid feedback and treat them as consultants for the projects and not representative of an evil enforcing authority, they tend to collaborate well with us and demonstrate increased flexibility.
- Although the council in theory have eight weeks to consider your application, in practice they are constantly overloaded. They will only look at your application in the last few days of the consideration period. If this is the first time that they come across a scheme that they were never consulted about, our chance to secure permission for you in a single attempt is significantly compromised.
- The standard practice is for the council to consider the full planning application as submitted and then issue a yes or no decision. Case officers are not required or even encouraged to enter a discussion with us or accept resubmission of minor changes to the proposed scheme during the consideration period.