Enfield Architects
About us
Tailoring a new home to your needs can be an exciting but daunting prospect. It is hard to know where to begin, what to address and, equally, what to preserve. It is worth seeking the expertise and guidance of professionals.
We launched Scenario with a vision to take Britain’s period architecture into the 21st century using big ideas, technological skill and modern, durable elements. We match each client to the specific scenario, customising spaces according to the needs of today and the future. Our interventions add economic, aesthetic and social value to residential property.
Our work in London and the Home Counties demonstrates our commitment to maintaining architectural charm while designing adaptable, contemporary spaces in a sustainable way.
Your Enfield project
A beautiful, highly functional home is the product of a deep understanding and precise analysis of each client’s unique lifestyle. Our tailor-made homes around Enfield and North London tell the stories of their owners – not their architects.
Our innovative design process helps us reinterpret traditional house typologies and design new-builds that respond to the existing streetscape. Our collaborative pre-planning strategy has been successful with local council authorities.
Tip
Discover if your chosen architect has had success steering planning applications through your local council. Visit the “planning applications” section of your council’s website and enter the architect’s name in the search criteria.
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
Our boutique studio focuses on high-end residential architecture around Greater London. We tackle interior alterations, refurbishments, full renovations and new-builds, collaborating closely with our clients from the initial drawings through construction. We strive to complete all our projects on time and on budget.
Scenario is a RIBA Chartered Practice complying with the strict criteria of the Royal Institute of Chartered Architects, covering insurance, health and safety and quality-management systems.
Early adopters of the latest technology, we use innovative 3D building information modelling (BIM) technology as a standard on all projects. Our experience shows that real-time visualisations and virtual reality are efficient tools for choosing finishes and fittings, and simulating natural light. All our project data comes from accurate, coordinated 3D models that save our clients time and money.
This Chartered Institute of Building case study demonstrates the benefits of this advanced technology for domestic architecture.
Enfield Architects
In our client's words
Enfield 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.
Enfield Architects
Great, professional service. Good drawings and models and ultimately passed planning at the first attempt with Hackney Council. Would certainly recommend!
Enfield 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.
Enfield 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'.
Enfield 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
Liveable London is expanding and there’s never been a better time to investigate the neighbourhood gems on its periphery. The borough of Enfield, nestled between the North Circular and the M25 on the fringes of North London, has been a secret well-kept by its residents for decades.
The borough is well connected to the City by the always-improving Overground, yet pleasingly leafy and speckled with villages that harken back to centuries past. Housing prices are climbing, but neither too high nor too quickly – just enough to attract young professionals deep into the process of “placemaking”. Those scruffier high streets are smartening up with cafes and independent shops; and its green parks are well tended and fiercely protected. Now is an auspicious time to be here.
When you look beyond the shop fronts, peek over the hedgerows and delve down side streets you find plenty of architectural merit around Enfield. Grand, old houses in every style – Gothic, Baroque, Victorian, Art Deco, Arts and Crafts, midcentury modern – link smaller residential neighbourhoods to the commercial districts. Look up and you can see gargoyles, carved phoenixes, turrets and lacy iron peeping out.
Each individual neighbourhood has an example of a quintessential Victorian pub untouched for generations – see the exuberant Jolly Butchers in Baker Street. Each has its award-winning affordable housing, from the Arts and Crafts Bush Hill Park Estates to Green Ridges, which incorporates Dutch and Spanish gables, Bauhaus corners and Modernist lines. And each has its own stately home and gardens. Myddleton House Gardens, Capel Manor Gardens and Jacobean manor Forty Hall seem better suited to Kent or Buckinghamshire, and yet here we are.
You’ll find a thatched-roof cottage from the 16th-century to Georgians and Victorians adorned with curly iron pillars up Chase Side. And, at the other end, purpose-built housing with modern fittings and landscaped gardens. Should you find a semi, terraced or detached house that suits your needs, there are umpteen opportunities to update and improve the property.
The results you’ll get from hiring an architect to work on an already great property are staggering. We have had a wealth of experience serving clients in Enfield and beyond. If you’re considering purchasing a home in the area, or if you’re contemplating an alteration of your existing home, have a look around our online portfolio to see the potential we can help you realise.
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.