Nestled into the far end of a 30m long suburban garden in Uxbridge, west London, with its highly stylised form and lively materials palette, Uxbridge Bower is a granny annexe like no other.

Designed by Bureau de Change to provide fully accessible discrete living quarters for the client’s mother and grandmother when she visits from native Greece, the new annexe offers both privacy and connection, enabling intergenerational living when the three generations come together in London. 

The single storey 30 sqm pavilion is compact in its design adhering to the height and mass restrictions stipulated by permitted development. It features a bedroom space facing onto the garden and an adjoining private ensuite, as well as cleverly integrating and concealing garden storage at the rear. It is sited and designed to be connected to and accessed via the existing property’s garden. 

Its design borrows from Art Deco of the local area, a decorative style of bold geometric shapes and bright colours, often characterised by low relief and stepped decorative panels around entrances and windows and roofs.

Uxbridge Bower has a hexagonal plan, a design strategy to minimise the mass of the pavilion whilst creating heightened drama through a series of columns which frame each elevation. This series of columns is read as a continuous line which runs seamlessly into the flat roof. Three of the elevations are glazed, fitted with sliding doors, offering a view of the garden, and a projecting veranda creates a sheltered shared space where three generations of the family can congregate.

Uxbridge Bower is built with CLT and is finished with textured render and bush hammered terrazzo which lines the openings of the veranda. The inner elevations of the columns and the underside of the ceiling in the veranda are painted in a warm ochre so that it glows in all seasons.

Photography: Gilbert McCarragher