Simon Conder Associates has placed a prefabricated, black-stained timber extension on top of a former warehouse in east London, creating a new home for the designers whose studio occupies the old building.

The three-storey Victorian warehouse is located in an industrial neighbourhood in Hackney, close to London Fields park, and is home to a multidisciplinary design agency.
The studio's owners asked British studio Simon Conder Associates to create a home within a vertical extension that complements the existing building and fits within the surrounding context.
"The project uses a robust architectural language which is site specific and responds to the industrial character of the original building in a way that respects the existing without attempting to copy it," said the architects.
Other stipulations of the brief for the Black House apartment included keeping the budget low and minimising disruption to the design studio's operations, as well as to neighbouring properties.
The two-storey structure also needed to limit the load on the original foundations, which prompted the architects to use lightweight, super-insulated timber panels for the external walls.

The extension's wooden superstructure was prefabricated in the north of England and craned onto the building in sections to speed up construction and reduce mess on site.
The planed-larch glulam frame remains exposed externally, and the walls are clad with sawn, horizontal weatherboarding finished with a ...