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Bringing all the advantages back home

Timber-frame house incorporates large laminated glass windows for daylighting, transparency and solar efficiency

From humble, back-alley beginnings as stables for horses, via a period, before the first world war, when they were used as accommodation for domestic staff attached to grand homes, London's mews houses have now graduated into splendid small homes in their own right.

Marcus Lee, a partner in the UK architectural firm Richard Rogers Partnership, designed a timber-frame mews house for himself in the 1980s that incorporates large windows with laminated safety glass on all the lower lites for maximum daylighting, transparency and solar efficiency. Lee says he was inspired by homes in California and Japan that allow as much natural light as possible to penetrate each level of the building.