AOC are a practice of architects and designers working from a studio on Columbia Road in East London. Established in 2005 we have worked with a wide range of clients to design and create bespoke homes in the city and in the country, for a little and a lot.

Sometimes we design new houses - working with our client to find a site, develop designs, get permissions, appoint a builder and get the house built.

Often we adapt existing homes. The clients already have a house but want to customise it to fit the way they’d like to live. The most common request is to make their cosy little house bigger. Remove a wall, make a hole in the floor, extend here, push up there. Let light in, allow longer views, provide new connections, create new types of space.

One of our clients told us the favourite thing about his newly adapted house was the surprise he felt when he got home every day.

“From the outside it looks little, a typical English house. But when I open the door it feels so big. It always takes my breath away. My little big house".

This seemed to capture the type of house we’d like to live in. A house that looks little, cosy and intimate from the outside but is big, spacious and generous inside.

littleBIG house builds on our experience of developing bespoke homes to create a house that can be customised to meet individual’s needs, without the time, effort and expense of a self-build project.