House Design
House Design
House Design
About us
Scenario is an established practice of skilled architects focusing on contemporary, minimalist house design. We take on projects of every scale and scope, from renovations and expansions to new-build homes.
We launched Scenario with a vision to revolutionise residential design, building bespoke contemporary homes for 21st-century living and adapting period architecture with modern, durable elements. Our clients collaborate with us, so that each Scenario design reflects their specific tastes, needs and ambitions for the future.
Your House project
Working closely with our clients, our dynamic architects aim to maximise space without sacrificing character. Our house designs respect the landscape, vernacular and period charm of a property while emphasising unique details that work for the long term. We collaborate with our clients every step of the way, from initial concept through construction to final completion, and we go to great lengths to finish all projects on time and within budget.
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 chosen architect has had success pushing 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.
House Design
House Design
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 use the latest 3D design and visualisation technology to streamline the architectural process. 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.
House Design
In our client's words
House Design
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.
House Design
Great, professional service. Good drawings and models and ultimately passed planning at the first attempt with Hackney Council. Would certainly recommend!
House Design
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.
House Design
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'.
House Design
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
We’re all spending more time bound to the house these days, working from home and travelling less. And because we’re asking more of our home environment, we want it to give us maximum pleasure: the best light, the most space, the dreamiest views.
Minimalist architecture can create such pleasures. Some of the world’s most iconic houses have subscribed to the minimalist aesthetic. Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye outside Paris, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, John Pawson’s Okinawa House, Marcio Kogan’s Paraty House in Brazil… these places have blown us away with their clean lines, uncluttered spaces, panoramic vistas and harmonious sensibilities. And while wild, natural landscapes lend themselves well to such an aesthetic, there is no reason to think that urban homes, such as London’s Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian housing stock, cannot be adapted and reconfigured to offer a similar sensibility.
Designing with a minimalist aesthetic often results in a house with a simple, straightforward, efficient layout, featuring stacked volumes and avoiding complex curves and angles. This design creates clarity, where spaces are predictable and uncomplicated. The defining characteristics of many minimalist floor plans include clean forms, open-plan layouts, well-designed storage areas, simple punched openings for doors and windows and an emphasis on natural light. Clean lines and natural materials are also key, with popular materials including oak, Douglas fir, concrete and glass.
The experienced team at Scenario can help you conceive a bespoke house design that adheres to your lifestyle, guiding you through countless considerations to ensure you get a functional, adaptable house that offers maximum pleasure and wow-factor.
Co-founders Ran Ankory and Maya Carni have been through the process themselves – twice. For their first home, they refurbished and extended a poky two-bedroom upper-floor Victorian flat in East London, creating an airy, spacious and thoroughly minimalist four-bedroom live-work space. Then, as their need for a larger family home grew, they acquired a Victorian terrace house in the same area and set about transforming it into an open, light-filled, imaginative modern home.
For inspiration when researching your minimalist house design, have a look through design and interiors magazines and visit online sites like Pinterest, Houzz and Instagram, where you can see the endless possibilities.
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.