Dene Happell has been a guest lecturer at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution in Washington and his interiors and furniture have been featured in all the world’s biggest design publications, but when he wanted to extend his home, Happell found that his reputation counted for nought with Glasgow’s planners.

Happell proposed a scheme of less than 260 sq ft and less than 23ft high, and believed that the slick but low profile extension of his semi-detached villa in Glasgow’s Jordanhill would not need planning permission as it fell under permitted development rights. But his plan was rejected, setting in train eight months of endless to-ing and fro-ing and a swathe of red tape.

“They weren’t prepared to entertain anything other than the bog-standard monopitch [roof] and roughcast [render] solution. There was no discussion. I argued for a new space at a second meeting and I even suggested knocking down the garage as a way to avoid their restrictions. I even threatened them with an awful uPVC clip-on extension from B&Q, exempt from planning regulations, but they still wouldn’t budge.”

Eventually, Happell got his desired result, the plan he had suggested eight months earlier, when a further meeting highlighted the planners’ error and proved unequivocally that permission was not required for the extension.

“I got my apology and a refund on a fee I’d sent to planning, but that in no way compensated me for my wasted time, grief or expended effort,” he says. “I have the greatest sympathy for anyone who finds themselves in this kind of situation, and I say that as someone who is experienced in dealing with regulations in my work.”

The extension itself, Happell says, was prompted by changing family circumstances. The arrival of twins, Farah and Jay, in March, created a family of four, and the need for more — and different — domestic space was pre-empted in the designer’s scheme. The Happells’ home is within the catchment area of the much-vaunted Jordanhill school, (adding 15%-20% to its value), and the preferred option was to extend rather than move out. “We like the house, like the area and as a growing family the school situation will become an issue in time, so we never wanted to move,” Happell says.

“Like most west-end houses this place was designed with a separate formal dining room, which really has little bearing on how people live now. What we have now is an overspill from the kitchen, an informal eating area and a family room that will encompass everything from relaxing together as a family to reading, listening to music, doing homework or even, for me, working on a laptop with one eye on the garden on sunny days.

“I wanted to create a functional, harmonious interior with a spatial flow that makes sense of the rest of the floorplan and pulls the kitchen and dining room together. With these external sliding doors we can bring the outside in, as the cliché goes.”

The transformation should come as no surprise to anybody who is familiar with Happell’s design work, which includes bar interiors such as Glasgow’s Groucho St Jude’s and Air Organic, offices such as the 1576 ad agency or with his wall tiles that were featured in Channel 4’s Big Brother house. “I’m inspired by the clean lines of Scandinavian and mid-century modern design,” he says. “My spaces are described as uncluttered, approachable and innovative.”

Happell credits “a low boredom threshold” as his motivation. He trained as a fine artist at Glasgow School of Art, alongside feted classmates such as Jim Lambie, before moving to the institution’s design school. “I’ve always been interested in all creative disciplines, blurring boundaries between fine art and design, and naturally I sought a sustainable outlet for my fine-art training,” he says.

Happell made his name with his “calling card”, the airport interior-inspired Glasgow bar, and developed a reputation for commercial commissions that included ad agencies, bars and chains of juice bars and estate agents.

By the time Glasgow became the UK City of Architecture and Design in 1999, Happell had diversified into producing slick modular furniture and decorative wall tiles, surfing the wave of demand for all things “interior designer” fuelled by magazines such as Wallpaper*.

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