Panoramic House sits within the Reddington and Frognal conservation area in Hampstead, London. The existing period home had a ground floor positioned nearly 1.5 metres above a generous south-facing garden, accessible only by a long flight of stairs. For a family wanting a closer relationship with their outdoor space, the separation was a structural fact the house could not resolve from within. MATA Architects treated the lower-ground extension as an act of descent rather than addition, bringing the new living volume down into the landscape it was designed to serve.

The site's natural slope became the primary design condition. By dropping the extension floor close to a metre below the original ground level while holding a consistent ceiling height, the architects achieved 2 things at once: increased internal headroom and a floor-level threshold where the living space meets the garden directly. The move also produces subtle spatial zoning within what reads as a single open-plan volume, avoiding the flatness that can characterize rear extensions of this scale.

Root protection zones for mature surrounding trees imposed real constraints on both footprint and levels. MATA worked with arboriculturists to calibrate the building's reach, and the resulting geometry carries the imprint of that negotiation. The constraint produced specificity rather than compromise.

The defining move is a glazed corner that opens the extension toward the garden without structural interruption. Large format sliding panels from Maxlight meet at the corner and, when open, dissolve the boundary between interior and landscape entirely. The panoramic view is both the spatial device and the organizing principle the project takes its name from.