When the couple applied to build an extension in 2003, planning permission was granted on condition that they hired the original architect. Now semi-retired, Manser is renowned for his unapologetically modern buildings such as the Hilton hotel at Heathrow. He chairs the National HomeBuilder Design Awards, and the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (Riba) Manser Medal for best one-off design is named in his honour.
“I was delighted to get involved again,” says Manser, 77. “It was lovely to come back and see it, as well as to design an extension using materials and methods that were unavailable to me back then.”
The finished extension adds a second dining room, a home office for Sarah, a kitchenette and a fifth en-suite bedroom. What began as a seemingly small, square-shaped house now has a corridor leading to a rectangular addition on the side, giving a more substantial L-shape to the home.
“Some of our friends used to think the house looked far too much like a box,” says Antony, 40, a PR consultant. “But everybody loves the inside — there is such fantastic use of space here.”
Manser says he designed the house originally for the owner of the large Georgian mansion next door, John Vickers. Vickers built it in 1967 for £7,000 in his own side garden, planted a high hedge to define a new boundary and sold off the mansion. He lived in the house until he died in 2000, and Antony and Sarah bought it from his daughter in 2002.
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The couple had been living in a Victorian house in Chelsea and were looking for something more modern in London, but then decided they wanted a quieter residential location to raise their three children, Ellie, 11, Eve, 10 and Tom, 6. When Sarah’s parents, who live in nearby Richmond, saw an advert for this house, the couple snapped it up for £550,000.
It was English Heritage that initially suggested using Manser to design the extension — his fee for the job was in the region of £20,000.
It is fascinating to watch Manser stroll around the house, which now represents his work at both ends of his career. When he designed the original house, he was still a young architect establishing his reputation for progressive thinking, but when he worked on the extension, he could take a more mature and experienced approach.
The outside panels of the original 2,000sq ft house are either made of clear glass windows or brown painted glass for solid walls, and they can be interchanged if the owner wanted to alter their positions. But, in reality, say the Poppletons, the impact of moving a window would too radically alter the internal layout of a room.
Its sprung wooden floor rests on six raised concrete pads so that the services could be run underneath the house and easily accessed by crawling in the gap underneath. Internally, the partition walls are hardboard, and there is a clever use of large sliding doors either side of the entrance to separate the open-plan living area into a dining room and lounge if required.
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“The goal with the first house was for it to be lightweight and economical by using a standard construction method,” says Manser. “Unfortunately, we were often thwarted by builders who were unfamiliar with the materials. Projects would drag because they hadn’t ordered everything in enough time — they were very surprised by the speed of construction. Still, I think the client usually got more space for their money than with traditional methods.”
That same sentiment may not be quite true for the extension, which cost the Poppletons £280,000 to build for an additional 1,200sq ft.
The biggest and most expensive difference is the use of £46,000-worth of load-bearing double glazing; the connecting corridor is made entirely of glass on one side, and each pane is three metres wide — so heavy, they required 10 men to lift them into place.
In the dining room and bedroom, the windows are much larger than the original house, but the Poppletons haven’t bothered installing any blinds or curtains, instead choosing an £800 freestanding roll-up screen made of corrugated grey paper for the bedroom.
“You need a lot of lighting in this part because at night the windows absorb it all,” says Sarah, 41, an occupational psychologist. “But in the daytime you get so much sunlight streaming in, you feel you are living right in the garden. We’ve got no plans to move: this is our ideal property.”
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Manser was president of Riba in 1984, when Prince Charles made his now notorious “carbuncle” speech, attacking modern architecture. But Manser is still as committed to his early design principles as he has always been, and dismisses the notion that society has seen any significant postmodern backlash. “You only have to look at an estate-agency window to see what people really want: wide, open-plan internal spaces with lots of light.”
Local estate agent Michael Everett believes the Poppletons were wise to hire Manser and that, despite the extra expense, the result is reflected in a £1m valuation. “The key thing is they have respected the provenance of the property,” he says. “And we do get buyers from central London, used to living on three or four floors, who see this as a refreshing change.”