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.
Your Guildford Project >> In our clients words
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 designed a kitchen extension for us, and we are delighted with the results. The process was well organised, planned and delivered, and the whole team were a pleasure to work with. I would highly recommend them for their design, planning and project management skills.
Worked with these guys on the internal development of our office. From start to finish they were great. They got what we wanted first time and really made working with them very easy. Their aftercare has been great too helping us deal with something that they were not involved with in the first place. Will highly recommend them to anyone.
