Brockley Architects
About us
Designing and renovating your home can be an exciting but daunting prospect. So we launched Scenario with a mission to collaborate closely with our clients on tailored spaces that meet their needs. We take a “less is more” approach to achieving better design through simplicity of form, space, materials, detail and colour.
Our London-based studio specialises in transforming period homes with big ideas, technological skill and modern, durable elements. Our bespoke designs tick all the boxes for now and years to come, adding economic and aesthetic value to every property.
Your Brockley project
We take on projects of every scale and scope, from renovations and expansions to new-build homes and outbuildings. Working closely with our clients, we aim to maximise space without sacrificing period charm.
Our landmark project is Scenario House, a contemporary, light-filled home adapted from a Victorian terrace in East London. Innovative and tailored to the owners’ requirements, it was shortlisted for several architecture prizes, including the prestigious RIBA London Award.
Tip
Discover if your architect has had success steering planning applications through your local council. Visit the “planning applications” page of your council’s website and enter the architect’s name in the search box.
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
To streamline the design process, we use the latest 3D design and visualisation technology. Our building information modelling technology (BIM) produces reliable construction information and accurate data to save our clients time and money. This Chartered Institute of Building case study, featuring one of our flagship projects, highlights the benefits of using advanced technology for modern house design.
A RIBA Chartered Practice, Scenario complies with essential criteria covering insurance, health and safety, and quality-management systems.
Brockley Architects
In our client's words
Brockley Architects
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.
Brockley Architects
Great, professional service. Good drawings and models and ultimately passed planning at the first attempt with Hackney Council. Would certainly recommend!
Brockley Architects
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.
Brockley Architects
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'.
Brockley Architects
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
Brockley is one of London’s best-preserved and most coherent Victorian suburbs. Its quiet streets house an unusually broad range of 19th-century architectural styles, from Gothic Revival piles to modest workmen’s cottages.
Once a small agricultural hamlet in Kent, with market gardens famous for their enormous Victoria rhubarb, the area became part of the south-east London borough of Lewisham in 1889. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Brockley was a wealthy, well-to-do area. Its most celebrated architectural relic is the Grade II-listed Stone House, built in 1773 by the architect George Gibson the Younger and Brockley’s oldest surviving house. Streets to the north side of the neighbourhood boast plenty of grand villas, large terraced homes and semi-detached houses, built for the well-to-do owners and managers of factories in neighbouring industrial areas such as Deptford and Bermondsey.
The damaging effects of two World Wars led the area’s wealthy residents to relocate to outer suburbs and beyond. Most of Brockley’s big houses were sub-divided into flats throughout the second half of the 20th century. But the arrival in 2012 of the London Overground, taking residents to Shoreditch in 20 minutes, has set the gentrification wheels in motion.
Brockley has always had a bohemian vibe and long attracted creative types with its reasonable cost of living. The 1960s saw a particularly large influx of artists from nearby Goldsmiths College and the Camberwell School of Art, drawn by the availability of neglected, cheap Victorian housing. The neighbourhood also boasts a host of open green spaces, some with views of central London and the City. There’s an award-winning weekly food market, the annual Brockley Open Studios weekend and a Midsummer Fayre on the calendar. And locals appreciate the continued preservation of the only intact 1950s ballroom remaining in London. Kitted out in red velvet, flocked wallpaper, chandeliers, glitter balls and Chinese lanterns, the Rivoli often serves as a setting for British-made films and advertisements, and plays host to many dance and musical events.
Frequently 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.