Our clients move to Guildford to get the best of both worlds. Guildford offers homeowners more space and quiet than a life in London with the benefit of excellent transport links to the capital and proximity to vast green spaces. The historic centre is a gateway to the rolling Downs with the West Country beyond, but also a hub for great shopping and dining. The housing landscape is a mixture of historic, half-timbered villas and modernised 20th-century homes.
Renovating or expanding a home in Guildford requires close attention to local regulations, and it pays to have an architect helping to navigate the local permissions process. Since its inception in 2007, Scenario Architecture has built both a reputation for transforming English homes and successful relationships with planning departments across the Southeast. Our experience has helped make Scenario one of the region’s most coveted architecture practices.
Scenario began with a vision to combine a passion for vernacular English architecture with contemporary design to create striking living spaces. To achieve this harmony, we put our clients’ needs and desires at the forefront of every design. A home that functions for the present and the future is the product of a deep understanding of each client. Scenario’s tailor-made homes tell a story about each owner – not about the architects.
To understand our talent for transforming period homes with beautiful, functional results, look at our landmark project, Scenario House. Shortlisted for the RIBA London Awards in 2018, this family home showcases our fresh, customised approach and our commitment to the needs of today’s homeowners.
Architects Guildford
Architects Guildford
Your Guildford Project
Starting your Guildford project
The architects at Scenario have put together an illustrated synopsis of the planning process in England’s southeast to help you understand what it entails, whether you hope to extend your home, renovate or build a new home entirely.
Tip
Discover if your chosen architect has had success steering planning applications through your local council. Visit the Guildford Borough website, click on “Planning and Building Control”, go into the search engine for planning applications and type in your agent’s name.Architects Guildford
Advice
We’ve created this guide to help steer you through planning in Guildford, London and the Southeast. Download it below.Your Guildford Project >> Scenario Architecture
Working with Scenario Architecture on your Guildford project
Architects Guildford
Architects Guildford
Architects Guildford
Further Reading
Since Saxon times, people have been settling at this spot overlooking the North Downs, then known as the Hog’s Back. They called the town Guildown, either for the golden colour of the marigold and wildflowers that coated the hills, or for the fact that it housed the country’s mint under the Anglo-Saxon kings.
Either way, there is no dispute that this high ground 30 miles southwest of London has a spectacular vantage point onto the surrounding countryside. The River Wey, running up through town, meanders between two chalk hills that rise over Surrey, with views to London in one direction and pretty rolling green in the other. Guildford High Street gets the gamut of well-known British shops, plus a good share of independents as well. Head to the other side of the river, just shy of the striking 20th-century cathedral, and The Mount climbs up past a cemetery to a patchwork of farmland. Distinguished Georgian houses give way, the higher you climb, to white stucco mock Tudors, built after the war. The local train hubs connect to London Waterloo in less than 45 minutes.
The city has the highest number of property millionaires in the county – nearly 6,000 in all. They live in the steep roads beyond the grounds of the thousand-year-old castle, or in the tidy residential streets north of the centre, where outstanding schools dot the neighbourhoods. Sprawling detached homes with four bedrooms are plentiful here, and homeowners add onto them with glass conservatories. There is ample opportunity for the expansion of smaller, newer homes, whether detached or semi-detached, nearly doubling their square footage in the process.
Enlarging a historic property in the city is not unheard of. There is some recent history in the area of local architects converting Grade II-listed properties and expanding houses that fall under conservation laws. Basements, garages, garden rooms and orangeries are popular forms of expansion. Some families have had the opportunity to build from scratch, adding pools and double-height great rooms. Further out into the surrounding rural area, old barns and farmhouses are being converted into family homes, using traditional oak frames to support wide banks of glass.
Ask your architects about their knowhow navigating the local permissions processes. The best architects will pilot your project through the Guildford regulations and liaise with you throughout the life of your home extension, renovation or new build.
In our clients words
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.
Great, professional service. Good drawings and models and ultimately passed planning at the first attempt with Hackney Council. Would certainly recommend!
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.
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’.
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.
ADVICE
FAQ
- 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.