Two and Half Storey House by Bradley Van Der Straeten is the Joint Winner of this year's Compact Design of the Year Prize. The Special Prize is awarded to the project that demonstrates ingenuity and creativity in a design with tight space constraints.

The project was completed for a family having a second baby on the way and who didn’t want to move from their two-bedroom home, located on a housing estate in Stoke Newington.

After unsuccessful attempts to get planning for a new full height roof extension, the solution was to work within Permitted Development guidelines and add a half-height box dormer, invisible from the street. The challenge was to make the unconventional interior volumes habitable. This was solved by stacking the two bedrooms, one above another, interlocking like 3d Tetris blocks, providing enough space for an additional room.

This clever, complex, geometric challenge of a project sits on a Stoke Newington housing estate - on which the architect also lives.  Many of the homes in the area are two-storey houses with long, thin layouts, and many have taken advantage of permitted development to create long, thin dormer extensions to get an extra floor. But the scheme’s wider and shorter form meant that the architect needed to opt for a different, ingenious proposition. The clients were seeking an extra bedroom, with the solution being a half storey addition that fits within regulations. This was achieved by stepping (in section) interlocking rooms, Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation being something of an inspiration to architect George Bradley.

The scheme includes making the ground floor open plan and creating a new kitchen, plus new full-width glazing onto the garden, with the beginnings of the language of the upstairs work expressed in the plywood clad stair. The stair continues past two bedrooms and bathroom at first floor and on to a new level with interlocking volumes and storage within, squeezing out as much space and head-height as possible. ‘What we wanted to do by adding this extra bedroom is add the extra space but kind of achieve something that didn't make the house feel smaller by squeezing an extra bedroom in’, said Bradley. ‘We actually wanted to result in adding more space within a similar volume but to make the house feel bigger as well’.