ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: Thursday 18 June 2015
Press contact: Gagandeep Bedi – gagandeep.bedi@riba.org 020 7307 3814
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is delighted to announce the longlist for the 2015 RIBA Manser Medal, sponsored by specialist insurer Hiscox.
20 remarkable homes, from Somerset to Scotland, are in the running for the prestigious award for the best new house or major extension in the UK.
Highlights include a modern family house created from disused farm buildings in the Scottish Highlands (The Mill), an architect-owned extremely low-energy self-built house on the edge of a Somerset village (Dundon Passivhaus), an unusual house in County Londonderry constructed from four shipping containers with a dramatic first floor cantilever (Grillagh Water House) and a split-level family home on a steep slope in suburban Belfast (House on Church Road).
RIBA Past President Stephen Hodder said:
“The longlist for the RIBA Manser Medal reveals the UK’s most ambitious and innovative new homes and highlights the ingenuity of talented architects. With this year’s exciting longlist, the bar for well-designed new homes has clearly been raised.”
Jonathan Manser, of The Manser Practice, said:
“The enthusiasm and commitment of clients all over the country in commissioning the design of houses large and small is reflected in this long list. It shows that, at its best, the relationship between architect and client, results in inspiring buildings and beautiful homes. The quality of the houses on the list will make choosing a winner both difficult but rewarding.”
The judges for the 2015 RIBA Manser Medal, sponsored by Hiscox, are Jonathan Manser, Chair of the RIBA Manser Medal jury, James Standen of Hiscox, Chris Loyn, the recipient of the 2014 Manser Medal and Tony Chapman, RIBA Head of Awards.
The longlist for the 2015 RIBA Manser Medal, sponsored by Hiscox is:
1. Cefn Castell, Gwynedd, Wales by Stephenson Studio LTD
State of the art contemporary house overlooking Cardigan Bay
2. Dundon Passivhaus, Somerset, England by Prewett Bizley Architects
An architect-owned extremely low-energy self-built house on the edge of a Somerset village
3. Fitzroy Park House, London, England by Stanton Williams
An elegant contemporary home in the Highgate Conservation Area
4. House on Church Road, Belfast, Northen Ireland by Hall McKnight
Split-level family home on a steep slope in suburban Belfast
5. Cliff House, Swansea, Wales by Hyde + Hyde Architects
Set on the coast, this three-storey home delivers stunning panoramic views of the Bristol Channel
6. Courtyard House, London, England by Dallas Pierce Quintero
An exemplar of working within limited space, this house creates a light and airy feeling throughout
7. Flint House, Buckinghamshire, England by Skene Catling De La Pena
A fascinating building of masonry and flint, its construction seems to dissolve as it reaches towards the sky
8. Folly Farm, Reading, England by Frances and Michael Edwards Architects
A substantial restoration of a Grade 1 listed Lutyens house, with renovation materials sourced from their original quarries
9. Grillagh Water House, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland by Patrick BradleyArchitects
Constructed from four shipping containers, this home uses discreet steel props to create a dramatic first floor cantilever
10. House in Formby, Liverpool, England by Shedkm
An intriguing villa with subtle undertones of Scandinavia
11. House at Maghera, County Down, Northern Ireland by Mcgonigle McGrath
Set on the stunning Mourne Mountains, this family house consists of two linear buildings rotated from one another
12. Kew House, London, England by Piercy&Company
This house creates a link between the rustic and refined by integrating an original 19th century stable wall into its design
13. Levring House, London, England by Jamie Fobert Architects
Arranged as a series of volumes, the house converges around a central lightwell climbing from the basement
14. (The) Mill, Scottish Borders, Scotland by WT Architecture
Overlooking a valley in the Scottish Borders, a collection of disused farm buildings have been revitalised to create a modern, rural holiday home with historic character
15. Pobble House, Kent, England by Guy Hollaway Architects
Timber, cement board and Corten steel is combined deliberately and carefully to give the house a strong profile of three pitched roof cabins, with a side pod appearing to float delicately above a bed of shingle
16. Stackyard, Diss, Suffolk by Mole Architects
With a focus on sustainability, this predominately timber built house is a fantastic addition to its countryside setting
17. Sussex House, West Sussex, England by Wilkinson King Architects
A stand-alone contemporary villa with an over-sailing first floor, this house is effortlessly orchestrated by a double height void and staircase
18. Vaulted House, London, England by vPPR Architects
This family house features six roofs, each topped by a skylight, that help spatially define and individually illuminate various parts of the open plan interior
19. Victoria Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland by Hall McKnight
This house bridges a deep cut stream with most of the accommodation on the far side, freeing up the flatter upper landscape to become a spacious family garden
20. Westmorland, Liverpool, England by Snook Architects
An unashamedly modern house with long span in-situ concrete frame, narrow brick cladding, steel window frames, stone and timber floors and a generous and light interior
ENDS
Notes to editors
- RIBA press contact: Gagandeep Bedi – gagandeep.bedi@riba.org 020 7307 3814
- For access to the architects and clients on selected Manser Medal longlist projects please contact Gagandeep Bedi
- The RIBA Manser Medal is awarded every year to the best new house designed by an architect in the UK. It was created in 2001 to celebrate excellence in housing design and was named to honour Michael Manser CBE, a designer of exceptional homes and former RIBA President. Previous winners include Loyn & Co for Stormy Castle (2014), Carl Turner Architects for Slip House (2013) and Acme for Hunsett Mill (2010).
- Hiscox, the international specialist insurer, is headquartered in Bermuda and listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE:HSX). There are three main underwriting divisions in the Group – Hiscox London Market, Hiscox Re and Hiscox Retail (which includes Hiscox UK and Europe, Hiscox Guernsey, Hiscox USA and subsidiary brand, DirectAsia). Hiscox underwrites internationally traded, bigger ticket business and reinsurance through Hiscox Re and Hiscox London Market. Through its retail businesses in the UK, Europe and the US Hiscox offers a range of specialist insurance for professionals and business customers, as well as homeowners. For further information visit www.hiscoxgroup.com
- Hiscox UK’s affinity partnerships team creates long term commercial relationships with leading brands. Through our relationship with the RIBA, we are able to offer members a 10% discount on their home insurance or office insurance which can also include cover for architectural models (subject to terms and conditions) – call 0844 248 1644 or visit www.hiscox.co.uk/riba
- The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) champions better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture and our members. Visit www.architecture.com and follow us on Twitter.
- The judges’ full citations and image links for each building follow:
Cefn Castell, Gwynedd, Wales by Stephenson Studio LTD
Cefn Castell occupies a remote coastal site overlooking Cardigan Bay. It replaces the remains of a cottage, which had existed on this site for 400 years, with a state of the art contemporary house. The cottage is not lost, but used to form the outer walls that frame the house within its relatively modest coast line plot. Accessed via a private secluded, unmarked track, Cefn Castell is in fact quite public, bounded on two sides by the coastal path. This, and its orientation and views, has defined its design approach, and the resulting architectural language. At first glance the house seems a simple exercise in modernism; an elegant composition in solid and void, glass and white render, creating a sequence of open plan living environments that maximise and frame the coastal views and its dramatic setting. On closer inspection, there is a rigour to the design, based around a dialogue between client and architect about the paintings of Piet Mondrian. A painting inspired by the French artist sits at the heart of the property and acts as a maquette for the architecture that surrounds it. As with most of Mondrian’s work it was as much to do with the space beyond the canvas, as that visible to the viewer. This understanding has been played out to great effect by the architects, working with large areas of frameless glazing to extend the spaces beyond the house into the range of courtyards and gardens that surround it.
Cliff House, Swansea, Wales by Hyde + Hyde Architects
The architecture of the Gower Peninsula is a broad palette, defined by its attraction to holiday makers and second home owners over the past century. It is an eclectic palette of the vernacular, temporary and modern, sitting cheek by jowl on varying plot sizes.
Approached from a private track popular with coastal walkers Cliff House is a welcome and new edition to this palette, offering an alternative approach to architecture in a coastal setting. This compact home, built over three storeys, provides efficiently planned accommodation for the client couple and their extended family. Built on a tight plot with challenging ground conditions, it is a fine example of an efficiently planned family home, spatially generous but with plenty of storage and rational circulation. The plot is afforded a particularly fine unfettered view of the Bristol Channel, which the design celebrates with its first floor panoramic window and balcony. The architects describe the house as ‘one of total focus on these views’ which is defined by a delicate composition of steel, timber and glass. It is this spatial device, on both ground and first floor, which successfully extends the sense of space within the building, connecting the inside with its external environment.
Courtyard House, London, England by Dallas Pierce Quintero
This ingenious two storey timber framed house cleverly exploits a small infill site previously occupied by an industrial unit. The site was severely constrained by its size and by the need to protect adjoining buildings from overlooking, while providing light and outlook for the occupiers of the new house. The jury found the journey from the street intriguing: the first space is a modest yard providing accommodation for bicycles and refuse, and a utility/workshop area. A small study separates the yard from the next space, which is a garden articulated by a diagonal path leading to the main building. Two further spaces allow light to the open plan ground floor, which consists of an engaging series of spaces, one of which can act as either dining area or second bedroom. Upstairs, the principle bedroom has a view out over the rear garden spaces of adjoining houses. The jury enjoyed the way in which the timber joists to the ceiling of the ground floor space emphasised the geometry of the building below, while the level change reinforced the view down into the garden between the study and the main building. The simple materials, including black profiled cement sheets, patterned blue bricks, a resin floor and timber ceilings, combine with the white-rendered walls to give a playfulness and clarity to the design as a whole. Detailing of sills, windows and cement sheet cladding are executed elegantly and effortlessly. Bearing in mind the constraints of the site, the jury found that the experience of being in the house was extraordinarily light and airy, with a subtle and sensitive sense of connection between the inside and outside spaces, reinforced by details such as bringing the blue brick wall from the courtyard into the house. Overall the jury felt that the design was an exemplar of exploiting a small and constrained infill site, to deliver a delightful and playful new living space.
Dundon Passivhaus, Somerset, England by Prewett Bizley Architects
Dundon house is an architect-client low-energy house built to Passivhaus standards at the foot of a wooded hill on the edge of a Somerset village. The house is approached via a small country lane and constitutes the last building on the road and, indeed, in the village. The roof line nestles behind the hedge row almost perfectly so it is not until one is almost upon the house that you notice it. There is a hard standing area to the front of the property and vehicles are protected under a large overhanging timber carport. The quiet front door is flanked via stacked logs hinting at the services solution. Entering the house you greeted with a forest of internal timber cladding lit beautifully via a carefully placed skylight that casts daylight not onto the staircase but the spaces below. Having removed coats one enters the primary living space and for the first time is drenched in the stunning landscape in which the house sits. Large sliding folding windows ensure that every ounce of the view penetrates the space. A large social kitchen and multifunction slab table infers the family driven nature of this design. This room opens up and reaches into the landscape with large protected terraces that not only provide covered seating space but solar energy. In the lounge area the feel is different, it is a ambient more introverted space with large log burners at its heart, a log burn that provides heating and hot water for the house. This is backed up with solar thermal on the roof and a MVHR system. The garden houses a rainwater harvesting tank capable of collecting 4,500 litres. The walls are super insulated using recycled paper. Moving downstairs we find 3 bedrooms all with views over the garden. The timber theme continues in the beautifully designed and constructed joinery and bathroom layouts. Special commendation is given to the architect for his profoundly sustainable approach but above all for creating a stunning un-confrontational home for his family that one could not fail to fall in love with and wish it was theirs.
Fitzroy Park House, London, England by Stanton Williams
A 1950’s house was replaced by this elegant contemporary four bedroom home, which takes advantage of a sloping site in the Highgate Conservation Area, on the edge of Hampstead Heath, to create a large footprint with an enticing mix of interlocking volumes and external terraces expertly embedded into the hillside. The house has been carefully placed within its plot to preserve mature trees, which are then complimented with a lush new landscape design of lawns and water gardens. From the outside the muted detailing of the timber boundary fence suggests the quality of the architecture within. The house is approached across a bridge traversing a cascading stream, transporting the visitor from north London to a semi-tropical paradise. The bridge leads to the heart of the house, which overlooks the day-lit double height volume of the living space and kitchen below. Large sliding glass doors open onto the garden at the lower level, blurring boundaries between inside and outside space, emphasising connections with nature. The arrangement of spaces is generous and free flowing, whilst also being carefully organised to create discrete zones for cooking, eating and living. The upper level cantilevers over the glazed lower levels. Windows have been carefully placed to frame views of the tree canopies. The building is naturally ventilated with clerestorey windows and high ceilings aiding cross ventilation. Balconies set within a timber surround emphasise the depth of the façade and help to shade the glazing. The material pallette reflects the natural setting and combines precisely detailed Acoya, cross-cut limestone and glass within elevations which help to embed the building into its site. Internally the materials are crisply detailed to articulate space and include thermo-treated oak ceilings, limestone and oak floors and plastered walls. Lighting is discreet and minimal, helping to gently wash surfaces and dissolve boundaries between inside and outside by night. Although luxurious, there is an easiness to the architecture which is welcoming and personable. It is both highly controlled and pleasantly human in scale, creating space, which is peaceful and rejuvenating.
Flint House, Buckinghamshire, England by Skene Catling De La Pena
The house sits within the grounds of a wider estate and forms accommodation for visitors, which includes family members as well as artists. The building is split into two parts: the main house plus an annexe. The building is constructed of masonry with flint cladding. The project is a rare example of a poetic narrative whose realisation remains true to the original concept. The site is on a seam of flint geology and is surrounded by ploughed fields where the flint sits on the surface. The building is conceived as a piece of that geology thrusting up through the flat landscape. The innovation and beauty of the scheme is particularly evident in the detail of the cladding. It consists of a varying use of flint that starts at its base as knapped flint and slowly changes in construction and texture until it becomes chalk walling at the highest point. This gives both a feeling of varying geological strata with the building dissolving as it reaches to the sky. The architects worked with a number of specialist and skilled craftsmen to achieve the end result. The development is part of a wider artistic project that has involved engagement with artists, photographers and musicians. Internally the spaces carefully frame the landscape and provide a rich sequence of spaces, which includes a small rivulet of water that snakes through part of the main house. Given the nature of the client and the brief, one might suggest that the project was able to push boundaries that many architects and clients would not be able to. But conversely, patronage has often been crucial in allowing the development of the arts and architecture. The building is an example of an innovative piece of architecture that suggests a typology for the one-off house that is not an object in the landscape but is of the landscape; yet is not so deferential to nature, that it isn’t challenging, dramatic, and most of all poetic. Flint House stood out as a significant project from the initial submissions. The photographs of the building had a painterly, almost ethereal quality. Expectations were therefore high when we visited the building. Remarkably that poetic quality was evident in the flesh, and to it was added a layer of rich detail in how the strata of flint and chalk grew out of the ground and rose to fade into the sky. Of all the projects visited it had the strongest narrative, passionately explained by the architect, and evident in the end result. This is a beautiful addition to a beautiful landscape.
Folly Farm, Reading, England by Frances and Michael Edwards Architects
The project consists of the restoration of a substantial Grade 1 Listed Sir Edwin Lutyens house, as well as the Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll grounds. The restoration of the house benefited from a photographic record in Country Life from 1913, a year after the house was completed. Many changes had occurred to the house since then and many of the internal features had been lost. Reference to the Country Life article, other Lutyens houses, plus careful investigation of retained elements has allowed the original Lutyens interiors, including their colour, to be reinstated. The client, architect and team are clearly passionate about the importance of the work undertaken. The skilled craftsmanship in the execution of the restoration is evident throughout. Particular examples are the reconstruction of the fireplaces which involved sourcing stone from the original quarries. Another example was in the restoration of one of the bathrooms, where the manufacture of the original fittings and tiles was painstakingly researched and sourced. The project is rather a contrast to the other new contemporary buildings visited, but it is a clear example of the broad nature of architecture. In the thorough and meticulous attention to detail in the restoration, an important Lutyens house has been re-discovered.
Grillagh Water House, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland by Patrick BradleyArchitects
Grillagh Water House is primarily constructed of four shipping containers, which were five years old when inventively repurposed into a home for architect Patrick Bradley. This small rural house is full of brio and youthful exuberance. However it is also informed by a deep knowledge of the County Down landscape based on Patrick’s experience working on the family farm on which this house is situated. One section of the house features the shipping containers, with discrete steel props, to generate a generate a dramatic first floor cantilever for the kitchen-living space, balcony and an external living room with fireplace, not forgetting the architect’s office just off of the entrance. The ground floor houses a utility room, bathroom and two bedrooms, one with an en-suite shower. The guest bedroom looks out over a water filled pond – a ha ha to keep out the cows from the field it surveys. The main bedroom, although on the ground floor, is also cantilevered over the land. Here gravel protects the house from inhabitation by sheep. This site adjacent, to a stream, has been sculpted by the architect with stone cut from a buff to form the context of the multiple cantilevers. However, even in this dramatic act, there is an economy of means with the cut sandstone forming all of the retaining walls of the landscape setting. The envelope of the house is composed of corten steel, expanded mesh rain screen and glass. Grillagh Water House offers a new vernacular to the rural landscape of Ireland, using the very technology that robbed Ulster of its linen mills – the shipping container. This house goes beyond adding value by design, it is joyful and offers new promise to its landscape – a new prototyping for living within the beautiful landscape of the island of Ireland.
House on Church Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland by Hall McKnight
Red brick is one of the materials that characterises Belfast. This family house is articulated as a cluster of three mono-pitched red brick and clay tile volumes. It looks out over the manicured landscape of Belvoir Park Golf Course, back to the city and the hills beyond. This is a family home where the communication between the clients and the architects has been exemplary, creating everything from room for muddy boots on entry, to spaces articulated for all the family, both collectively and individually. The mundane becomes the joyful in this home. The split section provides bedrooms for the four teenage children, arranged in two pairs. In the northern element of the tripartite composition on plan, the parents’ bedroom fills the section from the first floor, it also benefits from dual east and west aspect, with views of the graveyard and Belfast. The house has been designed to accept change in a growing family, the possibilities for the teenage children leaving home or remaining yet living a more autonomous life. Although on a steeply sloping site, step free accesses is provided to the ground floor where a visitor arrives into an outdoor brick lined room and is greeted by a brick-lined balcony that forms the void in the garden elevation. The architects state ‘a key component in our design was the selection of materials that are versatile and durable with excellent life-cycle performance’. Both the brick and the flush glazing system are the same specification as the same architects used at the MAC, which won an RIBA National Award in 2013, thus creating continuity in the pursuit of quality, with the architects working with the best modern crafts people in their region. In essence this house is a fragment of the city of Belfast located in one of its suburbs. From Church Road the house at first appears to be to be just two volumes. The architecture is reminiscent of the work of James Stirling when in partnership with James Gowan. The composition of this façade is delightfully balanced and carefully crafted. This house enjoys its suburban location. It is a home full of vitality and life, one that dreams of the city beyond.
House in Formby, Merseyside, England by Shedkm
This private house in Formby is an intriguing modernist villa, designed for a couple with a love of art, and is situated on a private park road in a Northern suburb of Merseyside. The architects started the project on a snow-covered Christmas Eve standing in the centre of this absolutely square plot with client and builder considering how to proceed. The resultant villa is essentially modernist, but with subtle undertones of Scandinavia and an uncanny sense of ‘home’ provided by the client within an architecturally geometric framework. Here the clients have been steadily involved throughout whilst the local builder has almost slavishly followed the architect’s profusion of detail, resulting in an elegant and flowing house of generous proportions that seems unpretentious and almost cosy in places. Local planners’ enthusiasm for the design was only tempered by the suggestion that overlooking famous neighbours may be a problem, thereby invoking the architect’s use of iroko fins and cladding above white colour washed brickwork. Internally a high ground floor ceiling and massive swinging panel doors provide flexible gallery space for art works of various types. Upstairs through a grand staircase the bedrooms are generous with amble storage and the en-suite roof lit shower rooms are narrow and dramatic. The master bathroom has an upwards view of the sky – all such ‘events’ are at the clients request and incorporated by the architect. It is at the same time both gentle yet geometrically rigorous – a family kitchen, snugs and storage to keep the main areas clear characterise the plan.
House at Maghera, County Down, Northern Ireland by Mcgonigle McGrath
This family house is on the edge of a clachan, a small grouping of farmsteads, on the leeward side of the stunning Mourne Mountains in County Down and is composed of two linear traditional building forms that continue the existing settlement pattern; each discrete form being displaced and slightly rotated in relation to its neighbour. The principle of this formal move is simple and also routinely attempted, but the achievement here is in the subtlety and control of the resulting composition: that which might have been the mere consequence of the contingencies of site and fit is here elevated to a taut and charged relationship of form, scale and alignment. Eschewing a naïve dependence on the diagram, the two forms are welded together by the extension of roof slopes. The resulting silhouette anchors the house to the ground and fixes it in the landscape with the memorable profile of the Mournes looming in the middle distance. There is real talent and judgment at work here and a deftness of hand that goes far beyond a reimagined vernacular or the pedantry of formal diagram. The secondary moves of walls, steps and plinth foreground the building in its immediate environment. The front entrance yard has a cool tension reminiscent of the Mexican architect Luis Barragan, albeit without the colour, and is authentic in its context and meaning. The entrance hall leads to a music room, a trapezoidal volume complete with piano, and enclosed by a pair of folding and sliding barn doors. A guest bedroom to the east occupies the end gable of the shorter building form – a wonderful cavernous volume with a large singular window and timber planks for a floor. The longer range of west-facing living rooms with serried overhead bedrooms all gaze outwards at the Mournes, the pattern thwarted by the cantilevered living room corner acting as foil to the linear diagram. In the second living room the diagram is subverted by a tall clerestory window reaching through the first floor to scoop morning east-light into this otherwise west-facing space. This is a family house providing an empathetic framework of beautiful spaces for its occupants, opportunistically using the site and appropriate technologies to achieve an eminently habitable and sustainable home. The quality of construction is very high, exemplary and demanding detailing executed with evident local skill and obvious pride (who said craft was dead): a credit to architect, client and builder.
Kew House, London, England by Piercy&Company
This four bedroom family house is formed of two prefabricated weathering steel volumes inserted behind a retained nineteenth century stable wall. The layout is informal; rich with incidental spaces and unexpected light sources. A delicate, glazed circulation link reveals the contrast between a rustic exterior and refined interior. Split into two wings, the simple plan makes the most of a constrained site and responds to the living patterns of the young family. Completed in January 2014, Kew House was an experimental project, driven by the architect’s and clients’ shared interest in a ‘kit-of-parts’ approach, prefabrication, and the self-build possibilities emerging from digital fabrication.
Levring House, London, England by Jamie Fobert Architects
The spacious and luxurious house fills a corner plot of a typical London mews in Bloomsbury with a heady mix of free flowing space, light filled voids, fastidious detailing and a brilliant regard for the surrounding context. Externally the building is finished with an elegant palette of Danish handmade bricks, bronze panels and plenty of glazing to draw natural light into the heart of the house. Great care has been taken to respect the massing of adjacent buildings and sensitively turn the corner from Roger Street into Doughty Mews. A combination of alignments, setbacks and a sunken basement belie the true volume of the house, which includes a garage, extensive plant rooms housing the machinery for deep bore ground source heat pumps and a delightful 14-m long marble lined lap pool in the basement. The house is arranged as a series of volumes, which step around a central lightwell, which climbs from the basement and is surrounded by full height sliding glazing. The ground floor includes the entrance, an office, guest accommodation and the garage. The first floor combines a glorious double height kitchen and dining space, which open onto a hidden terrace to the north, with a more intimate master bedroom overlooking the mews. On the top floor the building steps back out of view from the street with a more formal sitting room opening onto a south facing terrace. Internally the architecture is imbued with high quality materials and elegant detailing, which absorb light, are sensuous to the touch and beguiling to the eye. The concrete frame of the house is exposed in ceilings and columns and offset with timber floors, crafted joinery and plastered walls. This is architecture of sophistication and delight, crafted out of a tight and complex urban site with skill and panache. Complex volumes are rendered simple with a consistency of design approach to provide contemporary living space of the very highest calibre.
(The) Mill, Scottish Borders, Scotland by WT Architecture
Southside Steading is collection of disused farm buildings that nestles into a steep hill overlooking a valley in the Scottish Borders. Although near to towns, the location is remarkably remote with open views east and west up the valley. A settlement has existed in this location since the middle of the 18th century and by the 19th century consisted of a farmhouse, cattle byre, workers cottage and threshing mill. The brief was to convert the mill building to create a modern, rural holiday home that retained much of its historic character. Spaces were to be simple, utilitarian and durable, with views framed in all directions. Bedrooms could be small but living space was to be maximised. While open plan living was desirable, kitchen, dining and living spaces were to have their own identities. The mill’s distinctive long form emerging out of the hillside gives it a striking yet exposed position on the site and supported an architectural solution contained within the original walls. The original roof and floors were beyond repair, so a new insulated timber building was slotted into the existing structure, rising above the original wall head to provide a largely glazed clerestory from where light could spill down in to the lower floors. The limited budget only allowed for localised interventions to the stone walls, so original openings were used where possible and new openings were concentrated in the south gable. The dramatic level changes along the length of the building gave the opportunity to introduce half levels, and taller spaces, allowing light to move between the spaces and penetrate the tall cross-section of the building. The original front door is reused, entering into a boot room lined in larch. This opens on to a dining-hall with glimpses into the main living spaces beyond. Steps lead down a half level to the kitchen, which opens out to a wild garden space through large doors in an opening which originally allowed cart access. The main living space is half a level up from the dining-hall, with a new window pushed in to the thickness of the wall, acting as a viewing point for the valley below. An accessible bathroom, utility and bedroom are tucked in the partially underground north end of the building. On the upper floor there are three bedrooms, two accessed from the west stair and one from the east stair, allowing a double height space between to give light to the ground floor. The original building was characterised by its forgiving mix of rural materials showing its previous historic adaptations. The original walls were consolidated and repaired using stone from the site, and re-pointed with lime mortar. Any new openings in the stonework were edged in galvanised steel and the new timber structure clad in black stained timber as subservient to the original walls. Internally the walls are clad in construction grade spruce plywood, with a more pristine plastered core. Floors are pine boards and polished concrete.
Pobble House, Kent, England by Guy Hollaway Architects
Set against the bleak wilderness of Dungeness and its nuclear power station, this modest set of volumes forms a unique family retreat. A limited palette of timber, cement board and Corten steel is combined deliberately and carefully to give the house a strong profile of three pitched roof cabins, with a side pod appearing to float delicately above the shingle. A larger block is linked to a smaller children’s dormitory block, connected by a glass bridge, and includes a timber deck that wraps around the glazed elevation. There are elegant details here which include the treatment of the windows cut into the external boarding and the simple way the rainwater drains back into the shingle around the building perimeter. Internally a dark blue dining room includes a ribbon window that perfectly frames the view to the power station. There is a lot to admire in this small but perfectly formed house.
Stackyard, Diss, Suffolk by Mole Architects
Careful consideration to form, position, design, client considerations and aspirations to the scheme led to this project being a delight for the panel to visit. In sustainability, budget, timetable, engagement, invention and response to the site meant that this project ticked all the boxes of what good architecture is about. The impact on moving design and architecture forward and how it enhances its historical but also rural location meant that this is a stimulating and effective modern solution which sits well in its location and inspires in its outlook to the countryside it sits within. Spatially and originality of detail and use were clearly well considered. Sustainability was excellent and the consideration to lifetime use of materials very well matched to the scheme.
Sussex House, West Sussex, England by Wilkinson King Architects
This stand-alone contemporary villa set in the Sussex countryside is an exceptional retreat. Externally the house is quietly confident, with its row of low-profile roof pyramids, windows positioned to take advantage of the views and muted colour palette of materials. A lack of decoration and ornament gives this modern house a functional feel, but one that is cleverly considered to the very last detail. Internally the double height void and staircase orchestrate the house, effortlessly, organising a contiguous open plan and cellular spaces into a simple but elegant arrangement. The over-sailing first floor produces the feeling of a quiet monastic cloister with sun -filled spaces and carefully framed views. There is much to admire about the project, and it is clear the designers have invested a lot of energy into guiding the project to have a crafted feel through modern materials and technologies. The design fulfils the brief and provides the clients with so much more.
Vaulted House, London, England by vPPR Architects
This family house, built on the walled site of a former taxi garage, is almost entirely hidden in the middle of a Victorian block in Chiswick. The approach is a covered passage, beyond which is a brick-lined front porch. A recessed, chamfered surround for the front door hints at the geometric language of the house’s primary formal and spatial idea: a walled enclosure above which a cluster of six conjoined hipped roofs hovers enigmatically.
The house is arranged so that on entry, one is poised between the two levels, with stairs leading up to the open-plan living level, and down to the lower level of bedrooms. The Six roofs, each topped by a skylight, are lifted above the enclosing boundary wall. This creates a sense of weightlessness and a borrowed panorama of neighbouring gardens. The hipped roof’s sloped planes join precisely to form a series of large coffers or ‘vaults’. These vaults spatially define and individually illuminate various parts of the open plan main living space; kitchen, dining and living areas.
In two places, the vaulted roofs are absent, leaving two storey deep voids that act as garden courtyards for the basement level bedrooms and children’s playroom. Glazed walls slide back to expand the living space onto balconies that project into the voids, formed with perforated mesh. This material and its careful detailing creates beautiful shadows on pristine courtyard walls.
The house interior feels fun-filled and easy to live in, bursting with clever details and elements that reflect and reinforce the roof forms, such as the timber flooring and fireplace. The jury felt that this house is a sophisticated piece of urban infill, with its collection of roofs acting as a garden sculpture for 24 neighbours and as devices that powerfully intensify the relationship between dwelling, light and sky.
Victoria Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland by Hall McKnight
Situated in the mature suburban town of Holywood, on the southern shore of the Lagan, near Belfast, this discreet family house has been skilfully designed on a plot that no house builder nor developer would consider. The house bridges a deep cut stream with most of the accommodation on the far side, freeing up the flatter upper landscape to become a spacious family garden. With almost no street presence, it demonstrates the design skill of a California Case Study House but eschews that dramatic language for a considered and almost reticent language of construction. The architect, who grew up on this street, describes the house as ‘reading as a single object resting in a clearing’. Using a limited vocabulary of render and aluminium externally this house is honed and compositionally it is in control of the entire site.
It is intended by the architect to ‘feel permanent. Whilst neither traditional nor vernacular, this house resists the orthodox vocabulary of modernity.’
Internally the palette becomes richer with the in-situ terrazzo floor articulated with brass strips on the bridge level and walnut boards to the bedrooms below. The rooms of the bridge level, which is entered by visitors just beyond the centre of the plan, immediately above the stream, is a set of semi-public rooms set out enfilade. These rooms, family, kitchen, study, dining and living room can be separated by a series of doors that are skilfully integrated into the construction, sliding or folding depending on their location on plan. Only the utility room and guest bedroom, with its windows looking east on to the sunny garden, are isolated spaces. Here is the family entrance to the house where each member of the family has their own locker – the vision of a sparse family home being totally dependent of the provision of ample storage. The daughter from her bedroom has possibly the finest views in the house of the stream below, as if the house were the setting for her own family’s fairy tale of family life in Holywood.
Westmorland, Liverpool, England by Snook Architects
This private house for two partners in a classic modern furniture and artefact retail business posed something of a dilemma for both client and architect from the start – how far does the ethos of a strongly visual business influence the design of a private home and how is such a personal statement procured? Snook Architects chose to personalise development by initiating a ‘self-build’ process – in this case collaboration between architect as designer and contractor with significant client involvement. The result is a modernist house exquisitely conceived and detailed. The house occupies a site in a leafy private road leading to the river once populated with stuccoed merchant villas, now incorporating a smattering of modernist insertions. Westmorland is an unashamedly modern movement with long span in-situ concrete frame, European narrow brick cladding, steel window frames, stone and timber floors and a generous and light interior. A house like this is difficult for a jury to appraise – part personal statement, part architect’s predisposition – such houses emerge from time to time from the plethora of nondescript national house builders’ offerings as beacons of excellence invariably recognised by the RIBA, but sadly not always by the general public. However, this is usually due to outside appearances – this house being no exception with its almost ‘new brutalist’ ambiance – but inside all views are transformed – quality of materials, a minimal kitchen, luxury bathrooms – space and height. Yes, Westmorland is all of this and more. A TV series will be made here – people will spill out into Gatsby style garden parties and in the winter the owners will luxuriate by an impeccably constructed log fire enclosure. An exemplar for those who can afford California style living in places such as Liverpool.
Posted on Thursday 18th June 2015
