Henry Goss House

Architect Henry Goss has completed a rusted steel and timber-clad extension to a house near Cambridge, England, two years after Dezeen published the hyper-realistic renderings that changed his life. Goss designed the extension to Lode House for his cousin and her husband, who wanted to reorganise the interior of their home in the village of Lode to make it better suited to family life. Shortly after finalising the design, Dezeen interviewed the architect about his recently established visualisation studio, for which Lode House was one of the pilot projects. Since then, Goss has become so busy with rendering projects he has almost given up architecture. "The renders featured on Dezeen were fairly instrumental in gaining initial publicity for my business," he explained. "I am only doing architecture now for friends and family. My main business is architectural visualisation, which since the interview has taken over completely." The process of designing and building the Lode House extension began in 2011 and continued over several years, as there were no time constraints imposed by the clients. The brief was to work within a tight budget while still achieving an interesting and well-detailed addition to the house. The main objective was to rationalise the house's ground floor, which had been altered and extended over several decades. Goss sought to create an open kitchen, living and dining area, as well as adapting the functions of some other existing rooms.
"We went to the planners with something super-contemporary and were a bit worried because it's a conservation area with thatched cottages everywhere," Goss told Dezeen. "But they were really enlightened and keen for something to act as an exemplary scheme for contemporary design in an area where you really don't get much contemporary design."