Use of underground building dominates RIBA Manser Medal award list
20-09-2012
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The extensions are to a gamekeeper’s cottage in Gloucestershire and a French orangery near Paris, the oast houses are in East Sussex, the dune house in Thorpness, Suffolk and the sustainable new houses are in Cornwall. The RIBA Manser Medal 2012 shortlist has been chosen from winners of RIBA Awards and RIBA regional awards. The winner will be announced at the RIBA Stirling Prize dinner on 13 October 2012 in Manchester. The winning architect and client will receive trophies designed by the artist Petr Weigl.
Dune House by Jarmund Vigsnaes Architects & Mole Architects is described as ‘a conceptually bold project that is also well detailed and constructed’. It has an open plan living space hunkered into the land that is topped by four tent like bedrooms above. Architecturally the roof form plays on the local vernacular gables and sheds but is also an exploration in geometry. Environmental features include well insulated roofs and a 7,500 litre grey water tank, and a heat recovery system. A mandate was given by the client for a house that achieves 20% improvement in energy efficiency over current building regulations.
The project in Gloucestershire by David Russell, Found Associates, overlooks a lake in a valley on the edge of the Cotswolds. The Planners required that any new building on the site must be an extension to a tiny neglected gamekeeper’s cottage and that it be subordinate to it in scale. But the architect and the client successfully argued for a series of dry stone walls and terraces in which the house is buried under grass roofs. The result is a house of substantial scale that does not overwhelm the cottage, with its linear form exploited to create an unfolding sequence of spaces of special character.
Externally the house is formed out of dry stone walls, a modern interpretation of the local vernacular, with sloping grass roofs, the slope burying the house into the hillside. Internally the house is almost entirely concrete while the warm tone of the local aggregates and sands creating a material that harmonises with the stone of the cottage and the new drystone walls. It is described as showing ‘a deep understanding of the site, with the retention and immaculate restoration of the cottage, adding to the richness of the overall project’.
The French extension in the Ile de France by Architecturespossibles is in the corner of an undulating site of a former chateau, close to Versailles next to a heavily restored orangery whose origins can be traced back to the late 18th Century. The difficult brief called for an extension which impacted as little as possible on views from the orangery and on the mature landscape in which it is set. This suggested the L-shaped general plan and the use of an indigenous stone for retaining walls. But it did not suggest half burying a series of interconnecting cave like rooms nor the five three storey board marked concrete towers that poke out of the rockery roof. The local building code sets an eight metre height limit, The Orangery is seven, so the architect buried two metres of the linking building under the sloping site, allowing light in on the leading edge but meaning most of that accommodation does not count within the eight meter limit.
The code also calls for a gabled or hipped roof but it does allow, in exceptional cases, flat roofs as long as they do not exceed 25 square metres each. So five three storeyed tower like structures were designed, one room per floor with the circulation winding up through them providing dressing/storage, bathroom and bedroom. ‘This is masterful house making by an ingenious architect who saw the opportunities presented by the most unpromising of briefs and brought a little bit of San Gimignano to this corner of the Ile de France and made an originally sceptical client and his family more than happy,’ says the award description. The Oast house project by Duggan Morris Architects aimed to create a unified series of flowing, contemporary spaces linked to the rolling landscape setting. The brief also called for a building with character and personality, respectful of the existing Oast house, and taking advantage of the views. ‘The architects have rediscovered the integrity of the building through careful observation and research and have made the new additions and alterations work harmoniously with the old so as to create a new whole,’ says the awards. The original building was given a thorough but sensitive makeover, removing the garage, study and kitchen wing and what remained was carefully analysed and repaired appropriately.
As a result the shape, form, scale and quality of the 200 year old building is easily discernible against the new annex. The annex itself is described as ,more sculptural and dynamic’ and is clad in a stable, durable, engineered timber boarding, orientated vertically, in contrast to the rough sawn horizontal ship lapping timber cladding of the oast barn. A conflict between the needs of the client and the demands of conservation officials who wanted the replication of a traditional farm building aesthetic was resolved by breaking up and part burying the new building so it appears to be a collection of cellular timber outbuildings dominated by the bulk of the two oast houses. Yet internally it is quite the reverse.
The ‘separate’ barns form a beautiful continuous flowing open plan living area linking into bedrooms in the restored oast houses. The solar houses in Porthtowan, Truro, Cornwall, by Simon Condor Associates are surrounded by a suburban estate of 1950s bungalows but overlook the beach in the village of Porthtowan on the north Cornish coast, with views down the coast to St Ives. Clad entirely in timber, including the flat roofs, they are created out of a strong, simple and confident diagram which exploits fully the location and the enviable views. Built into the one in seven slope, the project is respectful of its neighbours, nestling into the ground to prevent obstructing their fine sea views. This site has thermal mass, solar gain and natural ventilation all main spaces benefit from the views. ‘On this hillside location, a successful balance is achieved between feeling exposed and contained, allowing occupants to enjoy a strong relationship with what, at times, must be very extreme weather conditions, whilst feeling secure and protected,’ says the award list. The houses use a combination of fully glazed southern elevations and high mass construction for the remainder of the houses in order to reduce energy costs.
Overheating in summer is dealt with by setting back the glazed elevations behind hardwood verandas which also provide balconies and allow the much lower winter sun to penetrate deep into the two houses. The external cladding, roof decking and veranda structures are all made from FSC certified hardwood which has been left unfinished to weather naturally to a silvery grey. ‘With very low energy consumption, consistent, elegant detailing and construction, these houses are great examples of how thoughtful, modest and economic architecture can create a passive sustainable living environment. In responding to the clients’ very detailed brief, the architect has developed a special home and studio that meets, precisely, their exacting requirements,’ it adds.
