Conceived by Jorn Utzon in 1961 for his friend the structural engineer Povl Ahm, this house is recognised as one of the most important modern houses in Britain.
Povl Ahm was a partner at the Danish engineering practice Ove Arup & Partners and worked with Utzon on the Sydney Opera House. Designed by the two Danes, the house was created for Ahm and his young family on this suburban site in Hertfordshire. Coppin Dockray were asked by the new owners – a professional couple with a young family – to design the interiors for the house.
Coppin Dockray’s choice of furnishings reflects the physical and historic context of the house and its Danish roots. The furniture collection works with the architectural journey – providing punctuation with key pieces where there are natural pause-points and at other times allowing the eye to effortlessly slide around the soft curves of the Jacobsen chairs to the lush green of the mature garden beyond.
The material qualities of the interiors, like the house, are natural and crafted, deliberately chosen to be long lasting and to develop their own patina over time. Coppin Dockray’s work included careful repairs to the Grade II Listed 1961 house and the reinstatement of some of the original joinery based on Utzon’s standard details.
Coppin Dockray
All images courtesy of Coppin Dockray
Coppin Dockray
Sandra Coppin and Bev Dockray have worked closely together for almost 20 years and founded Coppin Dockray in 2012. more
AVCIARCHITECTS provided a full modernization and interior re-design for this private villa, set in the natural beauty of an outer-London estate. The finished residence is comprised of a large multi-level living room and gallery, a conservatory and a library, a swimming pool, six bedrooms, and an annex guest wing.
Avci Architects
All images courtesy of Avci Architects
Avci Architects
Selcuk Avci and Sanja Jurca Avci established Avci Architects in London in 1989. In its first year, the practice won the top prize in the European Union biannual Energy Efficient Buildings Competition, a culmination of years of experience in sustainability, which set the tone for the direction of the practice. Although the practice specializes in many sectors in terms of programme, sustainability has become an underlying driving ethos, from the scale of regional masterplanning down to the design of a single product.
Avci Architects has designed projects in the UK as well as in Italy, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Serbia, Czech Republic, Slovenia and more recently in Turkey. Currently active projects include commercial and institutional offices, retail centres, private residential developments, and educational and cultural buildings including exhibitions and museums.
Avci Architects has studios in London, Istanbul and Ljubljana.
CONTACT
LONDON
Urbanista,
2 Eastbourne Terrace
London, United Kingdom
The guiding design principle was to create a house that combines transparency with sustainability, forging a strong relationship between the villa and the landscape. The harmony between landscape and interior, architecture and nature, was a key design determinant, particularly regarding sight lines, materials, colours, and lighting.
The house is designed from inside out, creating uninterrupted views to the surrounding nature while providing shelter and intimacy. All these aspects work together to ensure the house’s sense of timelessness. The villa is situated in a green oasis of trees and plants that hide the house from view.
Water plants along the water line alternate with stepping stones that lead to other parts of the garden. On the water side, the villa has an optimal view over the lake. Terraces on two different levels connect the villa to both the land and the water, anchoring the house in nature and giving it a welcoming presence.
Glass corner windows in the living room, kitchen and other rooms, make the residents feel like they live on the water. Between the house and the adjacent plot, a hilly finger of land with tall trees ensures privacy. By curving the bridge that connects the villa to the main road, the row of trees remains intact. This further increases the sense of privacy and blocks disturbing lights from the traffic.
Interior elements such as the fireplace and storage cupboards, divide the house into different places, creating more intimate and private areas within the large transparent volume. In the heart of the house, a full-height void connects all levels and creates another series of diagonal and vertical sight lines.
The staircase sews all the rooms together into one interior space. The central atrium brings abundant daylight into the sunken basement and connects the interior to the roof terrace. From the roof terrace, one can enjoy panoramic views as if floating quietly over the expanse of the lake.
Mecanoo architecten, officially founded in Delft in 1984, is made up of a highly multidisciplinary staff of creative professionals from 25 countries. The team includes architects, engineers, interior designers, urban planners, landscape architects and architectural technicians. The company is led by creative director/founding partner, Francine Houben, design and research director/partner Dick van Gameren, technical director Friso van der Steen, and financial director Peter Haasbroek. The extensive collective experience, gained over three decades, results in designs that are realised with technical expertise and great attention to detail. Mecanoo’s projects range from single houses to complete neighbourhoods and skyscrapers, cities and polders, schools, theatres and libraries, hotels, museums, and even a chapel. more
CONTACT
Mecanoo HQ
Oude Delft 203, 2611 HD Delft, The Netherlands
Postbus 3277, 2601 DG Delft, The Netherlands
+31 15 2798100
info@mecanoo.nl
Mecanoo New York office
120 Broadway, 20th Floor
New York, NY 10271, United States
Positioned on the highest point in Gloucestershire overlooking the Wye Valley, this new house and landscape is conceived as a “gallery with people living in it”, showcasing an extensive collection of African Tribal Art.
Windward House was a late-Georgian farmhouse with several extensions and outbuildings. ABA restored and transformed the interior with a new triple-height gallery space, mezzanine and guest accommodation.
The second phase of the project, the ‘West Wing’, is a 300 m² extension positioned to interlock with the existing farmhouse. It is subtly modelled to echo the undulations of the adjacent meadows, while forming a low-key backdrop to the existing house.
The West Wing is conceived as a series of courtyards, creating sheltered ‘outdoor rooms’ that contrast with the distant landscape seen from upper levels. A carefully choreographed sequence of spaces meander from the transformed Georgian farmhouse to the West Wing’s expanding and contracting volumes. A recessed court shelters the entrance from the south; a deep first floor roof terrace takes in the spectacular view south to the Bristol Channel; the double-height living room overlooks a sloped pool of grasses and perennials.
Rooflights sculpt and funnel light from above, selectively illuminating both spaces and objects below. Walls are positioned to accommodate a number of paintings and a large collection of books. Windows frame the landscape as a work of art, with pieces from the owner’s collection as foreground.
The West Wing re-uses stone found on site, creating a sense of continuity with the landscape. Anthracite cladding, arranged in a variegated pattern, echoes the dark vertical shadows of woodland trees in the nearby Forest of Dean. Supporting a new stone-clad mass above, a mirror polished stainless steel volume reflects the nearby wildflower meadow creating a visual paradox of mass and weightlessness.
ABA is currently working on the third phase of this project, the Pool House, due for completion in 2018.
Alison Brooks, Principal and Creative Director of Alison Brooks Architects, is one of the leading architects of her generation. She has developed an international reputation for a multi-award winning body of work since founding the practice in 1996. Born in Ontario, Canada in 1962, she moved to London in 1988 after graduating with a BES and BArch from the University of Waterloo.
Alison Brooks’ architectural approach emerges from broad cultural research, with each project expressing a specific response to place, community and landscape. This has produced a portfolio of projects of distinct identity encompassing urban design, housing, education and buildings for the arts. Her work has attracted international acclaim for its conceptual rigour, sculptural quality and ingenious detailing, exemplified by the spectacular new Cohen Quadrangle for Exeter College, Oxford.
Alison has become a public voice for the profession advocating the role of housing as civic building, the resurgence of building craft and the use of timber in architecture. In 2017 Alison was appointed as a Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA and selected as Mayors Design Advocate for London. She was honoured with the 2017 AJ 100 Contribution to the Profession Award giving the keynote speech to the UK’s 100 largest practices.
Named in 2012 by Debrett’s as one of ‘Britain’s 500 Most Influential’, Alison Brooks is the only British architect to have won all three of the UK’s most prestigious awards for architecture: the RIBA Stirling Prize, Manser Medal and Stephen Lawrence Prize. She was awarded 2013 Woman Architect of the Year by the Architect’s Journal in recognition of her work in housing, regeneration and education. In 2012 Alison Brooks and her team were awarded Architect of the Year and Housing Architect of the Year.
Alison Brooks is a CABE / Design Council National Design Review Panel Chair and Trustee of Open-City. She was a member of The Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment and the RIBA Awards group from 2010-15, where she was juror for the 2011 Stirling Prize and 2010 Lubetkin Prize. Brooks is currently External Examiner at the Architectural Association where she taught a Diploma Unit from 2008-2010. Alison lectures internationally on architecture and urban design. In 2016 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from University of Waterloo, Canada.
To mark 21 years since the founding of Alison Brooks Architects she published ‘Ideals then Ideas’; an overview of the practice’s work within conceptual, formal and material themes that have emerged over the past two decades.
CONTACT
Alison Brooks Architects
Unit 610, Highgate Studios, 53–79 Highgate Road, London NW5 1TL info@alisonbrooksarchitects.com +44 (0)207 267 9777
Henry Goss Architects’ Lode House extension in East Cambridgeshire has finally reached completion. The materials proposed echo the surrounding agricultural vernacular through the use of cor-ten cladding and timber lining to the solar shading element which even met with approval from the conservation officer despite having a clearly contemporary aesthetic so often resisted in conservation areas.
Henry Goss Architects was established in 2011 and is rapidly gaining a reputation for innovative contemporary design based on a ‘whole process’ collaborative approach.
Henry studied at the Welsh School of Architecture in Cardiff, graduating with a first class BSc (Hons) Degree and receiving the T Alwyn Lloyd Memorial Travelling Scholarship for best overall performance at BSc. Henry continued his studies in Cardiff and was awarded Distinction in his Diploma of Architecture as well as receiving two further awards: the T Alwyn Lloyd Memorial Fund Award for best overall performance at BArch and the Colwyn Foulkes Trust Award for best design making a major contribution to care for the environment. Henry was featured in Building Design’s top 10 architecture students ‘Class of 2005’ and in 2009 was awarded the Young European Architect of the Year Award by the Leading European Architects Forum (LEAF)
Having gained experience working as an architectural assistant for practices such as Foster and Partners in London and Collins and Turner Architects in Australia, Henry joined John Pardey Architects. During this five year period Henry was Project Architect for the RIBA Award winning ‘Hind House’ in 2008 and the RIBA Award winning Watson House in 2011.
The year prior to establishing Henry Goss Architects was spent with Rick Mather Architects where Henry was instrumental in the successful competition submission for a large-scale arts project in the United States as well as developing a tender submission for one of the largest Passivhaus housing schemes in the UK.
In 2014 Henry Goss and world renowned architectural visualiser Peter Guthrie founded The Boundary and Architectural Visualisation Studio which in the past three years has established a reputation as one of the leading studios of it’s kind in the world working on projects internationally with Architects including Renzo Piano, Peter Zumthor, Richard Rogers, Alvaro Siza, Herzog and Demuron, Richard Meier, Rafael Vinoly amongst others.
In 2017 Henry Goss Architects’ Lode House was awarded an RIBA regional award in the RIBA East District.
Having demolished their previous home to make way for a new dream family house, the client was keen for the Modern Detached home to be built quickly. The context is unashamedly suburban. Set between the poor examples of 1960s architecture, there are more attractive Arts and Crafts homes nearby. This millieu required a tempered approach that married the client’s desire for an uncompromisingly contemporary design with the restrictions of local planning sensibilities.
We drew inspiration from the Arts and Crafts houses nearby. By studying their complex symmetries, materials and mass, we secured planning permission without compromising the client’s vision, delivering a house that was considerably larger than what had preceded it.
Inside, large areas of glazing and windows keep the spaces light and airy. The central staircase is a play of light and shadows. Outside, a palette of serrated brick details, black charred timber and bronze bring a warmth and luxury, creating a stylish, contextually responsive new house.
TWO ELEMENTS
The house is composed from two distinct elements. The more traditional cellular spaces are contained within a simple brick and plain tiled ‘house’, typical of the area. The contrasting dark timber clad element interlocks with the house type and contains the dramatic double height entrance and circulation spaces as well as open plan kitchen, living dining areas which open to the garden.
At the beginning of the design process an analysis was made of all the different types of Arts & Crafts typologies on the street leading to a proposal that reinterprets the features of an Arts & Crafts house.
DEPTH
The southern and northern facades have brick fin details that give depth to the elevation. The eaves are crisply finished with beautifully cut bricks and recessed integrated gutters.
PLAYFUL SPATIALITY
The staircase adds playful connections to the upper floor as well as enhancing the spaciousness of the house by creating a three storey high void. Like many of the Arts & Crafts properties in the area the house has a predominant parti with the central stair exposed to the street with a central hall and rooms accessed from it. The hall is full of light, delicacy and experience with the grand brass staircase climbing through the triple height volume. Light from the south penetrates from a large ocular zenith window.
CONNECTION TO THE OUTSIDE
The black insertion breaks through to the rear creating a complex relationship with the garden. A contorted glazed threshold creates shading for the south facing sliding doors whilst also increasing the boundary between inside and outside. A series of elliptical and circular dining and bird tables run from the dining area into the garden like throwing pebbles into a pond to allow the family (and the birds) to enjoy the garden at all times of year.
The clients had long owned a decaying five-bedroom 1956 cedarwood bungalow on a glorious 1.75 acre south-facing site bordering the Thames between Marlow and Henley-on-Thames.Inspired by the heritage of a neighbouring Grade 1 Georgian mansion, they commissioned RIBA in 2005 to help find an architect to design ‘A Country Villa for the 21st Century’ that would stand the test of time, be a family house, but support them as they entered old age.It was to be as much a permanent record of design and construction excellence as the 18th Century mansion.
Mentored by Teresa Borsuk of Pollard Thomas Edwards, they created short lists from 67 proposals.The winning innovative design respected the AONB rural setting, offered flexibility in use of space, and provided ease of access via level thresholds, wide, latch-less pivot doors and a ground floor bedroom suite. Using modern materials and a ‘green’ agenda, it was inspired by the scale, setting and classic design principles of Palladio’s Villa Foscari : on a podium and in 9 sections.It drew considerable opposition from a neighbour and some conservation volunteers, but won planning approval through the active engagement of Wycombe Council’s Planners, RIBA ex-President Michael Manser,and CABE.
The project was divided into two phases so the clients could remain on site.A Corten-clad cross-laminated-timber gatehouse with studio, office, garage and one-bedroom flat, was completed by a contractor in 2013, with the main house being completed and the clients taking up residence In 2017.
*As a former director of Amin Taha Architects, Sarah Griffiths RIBA has been involved from projects inception in 2005 to its final delivery in 2017.
All images courtesy of Sarah Griffiths (Williams Griffiths)
Sarah Griffiths (Williams Griffiths)
Sarah Griffiths RIBA
Sarah studied at Birmingham School of Architecture and Edinburgh University and has worked previously at Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands Architects and McDowell & Benedetti Architects.
In 2003 she co- founded multi-award winning practice Amin Taha Architects with Amin Taha and Richard Cheesman.
The Woodman’s Treehouse is a luxurious two-storey suite arranged between and beneath the canopy of aged oaks in a rural green woodworking campus. The building is a truly collaborative design-build project constructed by highly skilled green furniture makers and traditional craftsmen with exceptional precision. The timber building draws on diverse architectural and cultural references combining with theatrical effects to create a visually rich and playful construction in the picturesque tradition. The plan is arranged around a central cylinder secreted within an octagonal outer casing. Box rooms clad in split sweet chestnut log stacks, oak laths and hand-cleft oak shingles are plugged into the core building. The treehouse is entered across a heavy oak block stressed ribbon bridge.
Brownlie Ernst and Marks Architects
All images courtesy of Brownlie Ernst and Marks Architects
Brownlie Ernst and Marks Architects
Brownlie Ernst and Marks (BEaM)
Brownlie Ernst and Marks (BEaM) is an international architectural practice with global reach. more
Keith Brownlie
Keith Brownlie RIBA RIAS FRSA is a British Architect with extensive experience in the architectural design of major infrastructure and urban design projects, including multi-modal transport facilities, public buildings and public pedestrian realm. He has an established international reputation for bridge design and has been involved in the design of numerous significant projects worldwide.
Major project experience includes the Tappan Zee Hudson River Crossing NY, Gerald Desmond Replacement Bridge CA, South Capitol Street Bridge DC, High Speed 1 rail link in the UK and the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel in Denmark. Keith is a former Director of Wilkinson Eyre Architects where he was responsible for a large body of award-winning work such as the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and the ‘supertall’ Guangzhou International Finance Centre.
Christian Ernst
Christian Ernst MAA is a Danish-registered, German Architect. He is a specialist in the architectural design of infrastructure and transportation projects and has exceptional experience on major international projects including some of the world’s most significant new bridges for road and rail. Christian runs the BEaM studio in Copenhagen, Denmark.
His recent major project undertakings include Velje Fjord high speed rail viaduct DK, Velje rail tunnel design and the new Norway National Stadium Bridge in Oslo. As a former board member and Architect with Dissing+Weitling Architecture, Christian was Project Architect for major international highway bridges including the Queensferry Crossing (formerly the Forth Replacement Crossing) in Scotland, the Gerald Desmond Replacement Bridge in the Port of Long Beach, California and many others.
James Marks
James Marks RIBA RIAS is a British Architect based in the BEaM UK studio. James has a long track record of managing the design and delivery of significant infrastructure projects, structures and specialist buildings. His international experience includes many award-winning bridges of all scales.
His projects range from small bespoke structures such as the Kings Park Pedestrian Link in Perth Australia to major infrastructure including Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington DC, the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne and the ‘New NY Crossing’. As former Associate Director at Wilkinson Eyre Architects, James was responsible for a range of high profile bridges including Media City Footbridge in England, Peace Bridge in Northern Ireland, Living Bridge in Ireland, Nesciobrug in the Netherlands and many others.
A wonderful one-acre walled garden forms the main part of the site, which sits just off the main road between Reading and Oxford in West Berkshire, midway between the two hospitals where the clients are both consultants.
The sloping site for the house sits to the south of the walled garden and so the design for the house is based on the desire to both enjoy a south-facing aspect yet engaging with the walled garden to the north, resulting in the main body of the house forming part of the wall. The house therefore sits between two worlds – a courtyard and a walled garden.A single-storey wing returns across the front of the site creating a courtyard within. The courtyard becomes sunken into the rising site and is enclosed by flint-faced walls on two sides, while the main living spaces are set back beneath the upper floor to shade the fully glazed wall onto the courtyard. A large open plan kitchen-dining-living space opens into the courtyard create an inside-outside living experience. A guest suite and study occupy the front wing beneath a sedum roof.The upper floor contains bedroom accommodation within a sweet chestnut-clad volume that sits above the rebuilt red brick of the walled garden, which culminates in a chimney that ties both volumes together. The design therefore creates a courtyard house that enjoys both a south facing aspect, while also opening out to views into the walled garden to the north.
John Pardey established his practice in 1988 as a sole trader whilst teaching at several schools of architecture. The practice re-launched in 2000 as John Pardey Architects and now employs eleven staff. more
CONTACT
Beck Farm Studio, St Leonard’s Road, East End, Lymington, Hampshire SO41 5SR
“I don’t want to create something that is just beautiful. For me, it should also work really well. Design has to add value. It should be simple and logical, it has to survive and give longevity – only then is it logical and clever.”
Thomas Griem is the founder and director of TG-Studio, his 20 years’ experience spans from residential, retail and office schemes in international locations from Hong Kong to New York. Thomas studied in Berlin and London, where he won the Hubert Sands Memorial Award, and graduated with a BA and a diploma in Architecture. In 1998 Thomas worked with Phillippe Starck for the global residential developer YOO and went on to co-found the successful interior design practice Target Living. After taking it to the prominent position of industry design leader, Thomas Griem decided to move on in 2011 by starting the creative venture that is TG-Studio.
CONTACT
TG-Studio
10 Rathbone Place
London
W1T 1HP
T 020 7636 3838
F 020 7636 5659
info@tg-studio.co.uk
Awards:
Winner – AJ Retrofit Awards Best Extension over £500,000
Shortlisted – NLA Awards Don’t Move Improve 2016
This project is a radical remodelling of a house in a Conservation area for a young family. The design adds a new basement and a rear extension, which provides expanded living and kitchen space, sky lit sun-filled bathrooms, a home cinema, playroom and guest bedroom. We sought to create an innovative design – rethinking the basement typology in a contemporary way.
The ambitions for the project were high in terms of achieving open plan, visually connected spaces to allow for a greater sense of communication between the different rooms. The key strategy was also the connection to nature through views and natural light.
The conceptual approach was to create a calm atmospheric interior using carved out spaces that allow the pared down use of materials to have a monolithic feel.
The new basement area is lit by large skylights cut into the floors above. All levels are opened out to allow the existing rooms of the Victorian house to give way to an open plan interior on the ground floor and tall loft like spaces upstairs. The kitchen and living rooms open out to a south-west facing patio, creating a strong connection of house and garden.
The new extension to the rear links into the old brickwork through a curved wall suspended above the ground above a completely glazed set of folding doors. The bathrooms are top lit by generous skylights linking bathing spaces to the sky above. The existing ceilings were removed upstairs creating tall vertical spaces with curved ceilings.
Neil Dusheiko Architects
All images courtesy of Neil Dusheiko Architects
PLANS
Neil Dusheiko Architects
Neil Dusheiko Director
Neil Dusheiko studied architecture at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg graduating in 1994 with distinction. Following his studies he worked for various practices in Sydney, Australia until moving to London in 1998.
He worked for Walters and Cohen contributing to various cultural, educational and residential projects. In 2001 he was recruited by Allies and Morrison and working as a project architect, he was involved in a range of complex infrastructure projects including the King’s Cross Underground Station redevelopment as well as contributing to several mixed use masterplan projects. He continued this work as a project architect at Maccreanor Lavington prior to setting up his own practice in Shoreditch in 2010.
This wooden-clad annexe, completed September 2017, replaced a dated structure in the grounds of a house that Magnus Strom had worked on at his previous practice. The main house was completed back in 2010, and the owner approached Strom Architects in 2015 to replace the existing annexe on site. The client wanted a fun and flexible space that could act as a party house and additional accommodation when needed.
The property sits within the New Forest National Park, making it an ecologically sensitive site. This meant extensive wildlife surveys had to be undertaken prior to beginning any works, in order to minimise disruption to the natural habitats of different species. Once all the ecological issues were dealt with, we demolished the existing building, and replaced it with this timber-framed structure.
The house and the annexe share a common architectural language: the use of sweet chestnut cladding and black Kolumba brick on the exterior visually ties the two buildings together; however, a pitched roof and smaller punched windows provide the annexe with its own distinct design identity.
Internally, the external walls and ceiling are clad in reclaimed pine, and all partition walls are timber stud construction, clad in grey Valchromat; the floor is finished with the same black brick as the exterior plinth. The floor plan consists of two cozy bedrooms, one bathroom and an open-plan living/games/bar area, with a mezzanine storage area.
Interior fitting such as the bar, bedside units and hanging rails have been designed to read as part of the architecture, as if all one giant joinery item. The units are made out of grey Valchromat, wrapped in blackened steel and highlighted by recessed LED lighting.
Outside, there is a wooden decked, complete with semi-sunken wooden hot tub, a built-in brick seating area, and pizza oven and wood store.
Magnus Ström, Director BA(Hons) DipArch ARB RIBA SAR/ MSA
Magnus came from Sweden to study architecture at Portsmouth University in 1995, graduating at the top of his class with a first in his BA (Hons) Degree, and winning two awards for degree projects. After working for a time in London and Winchester, he continued his studies and gained a Distinction in his Diploma. He also received the post-graduate RIBA South Region Award for outstanding design work, and was nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal.
After graduating, Magnus joined the esteemed Dublin practice deBlacam & Meagher Architects where he worked for a year. He was then invited to join John Pardey Architects in 2002 South England where he spent 8 years – latterly as a Director of the practice. His work included residential, educational and commercial projects – both for private and public sector clients. He was responsible for the conception and design of numerous private houses, as well as running several large-scale, mixed-use projects in London, Dublin and the USA.
Ström Architects was formed in 2010, and is an award-winning boutique architects’ practice, focusing on one-off contemporary residential projects in the UK and abroad.
CONTACT
Ström Architects Limited
Unit 4, The Old Printworks
85b High Street
Lymington
Hampshire, SO41 9AN
UK
Contractor: James Developments Ltd Energy Consultant: Melin Quantity Surveyor: Ivor Russell Partnership Interior Design:Bracey Interiors Ltd Bathroom Supplier: Kohler Landscape Design:Environment Wales Lighting Design: Erco Lighting Limited Structural Engineers: CB3 Consult
Recently awarded the Royal Society of Architects Wales, ‘Best Building of 2017’ along with an ‘RSAW award for Architecture’ and ‘Client of the Year’ award.
This is a very elegant and thoughtful piece of architecture. It has great conceptual clarity, it is rich with ideas without being over burdened with them. While it is rigorous in resolution it retains an air of easiness and is wholly comfortable in its context.
RSAW Judges comments
Our clients live among light and the warmth of wood, while presiding over the spectacular views towards Oxwich Point.
The material language of the ground floor responds to the medieval tradition of dry stone walling found in the area. Portal windows to the ground floor bedrooms cantilever over a reflecting pool that gathers rainwater from the roofs above.
Living spaces are found at first floor resting on exposed timber beams which themselves learn from the tectonic construction of agricultural buildings nearby. A sound recording studio located within the basement gathers natural light through the reflecting pool surrounding the residence.
The main monopitch roof responds to the relentless wind and rain which blows from the open ocean over a timeless landscape.
Hyde + Hyde Architects
All images courtesy of Hyde + Hyde Architects
Hyde + Hyde Architects
The practice was formed by Architects Kristian + Kay Hyde in 2006. The heart of the practice is a close collaboration between the following people…
“The Quest” is a replacement dwelling in Swanage, UK. Planning permission was granted in early 2014, and the project was completed in January 2016.
The site is heavily wooded and enjoys a beautiful southerly aspect with a view over the Durlston Country Park. Early on, we established the advantages of a single-storey building; it would suit the retired clients’ future needs, give an elegant solution to the steeply sloped site and allow a simple arrangement of spaces. At the same time, the design reduces the visual impact from across the valley when looking back towards the house and helped the scheme from a planning point of view.
The sloping site – with protected mature trees – very much dictated the positioning of the dwelling. Access is via the front of the property, so we made use of a retaining wall, faced in local Purbeck stone, to define different levels and visually mask the vehicular route, maintaining a clear view from the living spaces across the valley.
The single-storey house cantilevers over the retaining wall to deal with the level changes and views. The large cantilever has been achieved through two concrete planes: the floor and roof acting together like a space beam. The concrete structure is then in-filled with simple timber dry-lining, leaving the concrete frame visible externally.
The house exemplifies our belief that simplicity and honesty of construction underlie good design. The initial concept and design drivers are instantly recognisable in the building, and we strive to retain this clarity of intent without adding anything unnecessary to the building. We think carefully about how we build our buildings and work closely with our engineers to ensure an architecture founded in such basic things such as structure, details, materials and order.
Strom Architects
All images courtesy of Strom Architects
Strom Architects
Ström Architects is an award-winning, contemporary boutique architecture practice in Hampshire.
The practice was founded in New Forest by Magnus Ström in 2010.
Magnus Ström, Director BA(Hons) DipArch ARB RIBA SAR/ MSA
Magnus came from Sweden to study architecture at Portsmouth University in 1995, graduating at the top of his class with a first in his BA (Hons) Degree, and winning two awards for degree projects. After working for a time in London and Winchester, he continued his studies and gained a Distinction in his Diploma. He also received the post-graduate RIBA South Region Award for outstanding design work, and was nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal.
After graduating, Magnus joined the esteemed Dublin practice deBlacam & Meagher Architects where he worked for a year. He was then invited to join John Pardey Architects in 2002 South England where he spent 8 years – latterly as a Director of the practice. His work included residential, educational and commercial projects – both for private and public sector clients. He was responsible for the conception and design of numerous private houses, as well as running several large-scale, mixed-use projects in London, Dublin and the USA.
Ström Architects was formed in 2010, and is an award-winning boutique architects’ practice, focusing on one-off contemporary residential projects in the UK and abroad.
Ness Point is grown out of the dramatic landscape of the white cliffs of Dover. The undulating form of the plan orientates the internal spaces to different aspects of the landscape beyond. Each room is characterised by its own spectacular view: towards the cliffs along the coast, across the English Channel with the passing ships, and to the rising or setting sun. The texture of the white rendered walls of the building catches the dynamic and ever-changing play of light that reflects off the sea below.
Along the sea-facing southern façade, the house rises up towards the sky and deep window recesses in the thick wall create sunshade. To the north, flush windows form internal niches in a top lit double-height art gallery. The highly sealed and insulated castle- like house utilises heat recovery and solar thermal renewable systems to maximise energy efficiency in the winter, whilst the long gallery skylight enables controlled passive cooling in the summer. The bio-diverse green roof slopes down toward the rising site at the back, retaining rainwater and harbouring local wildlife, merging the house with the landscape into which it is anchored.
