Whalley Range

The site is located within Whalley Range Conservation Area, two miles south of Manchester City Centre. The area is mainly residential with the houses generally constructed in red/orange or buff brick with feature stone dressings, blue slate roofs and decorative elevational features.

The project is an eco-refurbishment of a large Victorian 6-bed semi-detached house with extensive upgrading works to reduce carbon emissions whilst also keeping the special character of the house and retaining existing external and internal architectural features. A sustainable approach to the refurbishment is to improve and invest in elements of the building fabric that will be difficult to upgrade in the future by providing: an external insulation system; increasing airtightness and natural daylight; providing a mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system; efficient management/control systems; flexible layouts and using quality materials.

The alteration works brought the dark basement area into use by demolishing a single storey rear outrigger to give a new lower ground floor study area to the rear garden with folding doors opening into a new lower ground floor courtyard. New kitchen, cloakroom, bathroom and shower rooms were provided on the ground floor and upper floor and the loft space was re-roofed and extended.