How to make an Accessible, Sustainable Home

The clients at Cromwell Close had reached a point of honest reckoning with their home. The existing house was multi-level, its rooms spread across different floors and half-landings in a way that had become increasingly awkward to navigate. The spaces felt disconnected from one another, difficult to flow between, difficult to heat, and difficult to adapt. The building offered little in the way of natural light, and its thermal performance was poor.
But the deeper motivation was one that more and more homeowners are beginning to think seriously about: accessibility. The clients wanted a home they could live in comfortably not just now, but for the rest of their lives, a home that would not require them to leave as they aged or as their mobility needs changed. The existing house, with its levels and its stairs, could not offer that future. Something needed to change fundamentally.

Demolish and Rebuild for Coherence, Light and Accessibility

Simon Mack Architecture's response was to propose demolition and a new build, a solution that, as with Belle Vue Road, would deliver far more than a refurbishment of the existing structure could ever achieve at comparable cost.
The concept centres on a coherent plan: main rooms on one level, arranged to flow naturally from one to the next without steps, changes in level or the disconnected circulation that made the existing house so frustrating. Designed from the outset for accessibility, every space from the entrance to the bedrooms, from the kitchen to the garden, is navigable with ease, whether on foot, with a walking aid or in a wheelchair. There is an upper floor and lift but this could become a guest suite. The new building is conceived with generous natural light at its heart, with careful orientation and considered glazing bringing daylight deep into the plan throughout the day. Thermal performance is designed to modern standards from the ground up, well-insulated, airtight and energy efficient in a way that the existing house never could be.
Critically, the spaces are designed to be adaptable. Wider doorways, level thresholds, a plan that can accommodate future changes without structural intervention, this is a home that anticipates change rather than resisting it. The modernist aesthetic is clean, calm and unpretentious: a home that is beautiful precisely because it is so well resolved.

Spaces That Are Generous, Adaptable and Genuinely Liveable

This concept offers the clients something the existing house never could: the confidence that their home will work for them not just today but in ten, twenty and thirty years' time. Coherent, connected spaces make daily life easier and more pleasurable. A well-insulated, properly lit home is simply a more comfortable and healthier place to spend time.
The vision for Cromwell Close is of a home that feels generous without being large, calm without being cold, and contemporary without being at odds with its setting. Adaptable spaces mean that as the clients' lives evolve, as a spare room becomes a home office, or a study becomes a bedroom, or accessibility needs change, the house can respond without upheaval.
Good architecture should anticipate the future as much as it serves the present.
This project is presented as an initial design concept.