Surface Design Awards – Complete

• HOUSING - INTERIOR 
  Buildings such as houses, flats and apartments that are used for sheltering people. These could be either part of the private or public sector and could be individual dwellings or multi-dwelling developments. Social rented, affordable rented and intermediate housing, provided to specified eligible households whose needs are not met by the market are included.

Satish Jassal Architects has completed a new-build single storey house on a backland site in Haringey, north London. Located behind a butcher’s shop on busy Turnpike Lane, and accessed via a 1m-wide covered passageway between retail premises, constructing the house was “like building through a straw,” says Satish. Despite the challenging site, the result is a home that brings light, volume and materials to the fore.

The shop owners had the site in the family for 30 years, and wanted to unlock the potential of a 110sqm overgrown piece of land to the rear. The brief was very open – “see what you can do” – and Satish Jassal Architects took the project from planning to completion including design and project management.

A pair of offset volumes create a courtyard entrance, and a further courtyard to the rear, with a central living/dining/kitchen space and two diagonally opposite bedrooms. Each volume is topped with an asymmetrical pyramid-shaped sedum roof, punctuated by a rooflight; the intention was to give neighbours a more pleasing view to look down on, rather than the existing jumble of ad-hoc retail and restaurant extensions. The central rooflights create a focus for the coffered asymmetrical pyramid roofs.

The exterior plays with a number of materials, with brickwork walls, oak-framed glazing that sits on white stone sills, and black steel used for the entrance gate and the brise-soleils over the doors and windows. The practice is known for its use of brick to create highly crafted and thoughtfully detailed buildings, and this is no exception: the handmade bricks have a rough, imperfect texture, brought to the fore by recessed pointing, creating a more lived-in feel that helps the building bed into to its environment. Vertical stack-bonded brickwork meets horizontal stack-bonded brickwork at parapet level, with neatly turned corners: the house’s dimensions were carefully worked out based on a single brick module.

A similar materials palette continues inside, with the brickwork left exposed in places and oak flooring used throughout. The two asymmetrical pyramid-shaped coffered roofs, which are made from glulam beams and sit on a perimeter steel frame, culminate in timber ‘chandeliers’ suspended beneath the rooflights. By day, the sun’s rays track around the room and highlight the sculptural quality of the ceiling; by night, concealed LED strips create a simple but eye-catching lighting feature, emphasising the 3.5m highest point and giving the illusion of greater space than the 66 sqm footprint would suggest. The house’s sustainability credentials are met through the use of an air-source heat pump and a biodiverse green roof.

The building’s construction is easy to read thanks to its expressed structure and exposed materiality. The narrow access via the alleyway governed many of the design, construction and material considerations, from the steel screw piles that could be installed without a piling rig to the use of small modules (like the bricks) that could all be delivered via trolley. Parking bays on the road also needed to be suspended for deliveries and to use the space for storage, and Satish estimates that around a quarter of the building cost was spent on the logistics of navigating the site. “This was a very tricky backland site, but the key message is that with careful planning, you can succeed,” he says. “Good design does not cost more. It’s about careful consideration of context and materiality.”

The bungalow utilised a textured handmade red brick with vertical and horizontal stack bonding patterns, expressed both internally and externally. The lower section features vertical stack-bonded brickwork, while the upper section is adorned with horizontal stack-bonded brickwork. Each corner of the house is accentuated with a unique brick pattern that turns the corner.

The oak-framed windows breathe life into the house, opening it up to the two courtyards. The steps in the oak bays add depth to the façade, while the golden hue of the oak provides a naturally warm surface. This warmth is echoed both inside and outside the house, complementing the rough red brick.

White stonework sits beneath the oak windows and upon the roof parapet, providing contrast and relief.

The bungalow’s architectural metalwork is in blackened aluminium, as seen at the entrance gate, railing, and brise soleils.

Stepped glulam beams support the two asymmetrical pyramid-shaped roofs, their volumes exposed internally. The roof is covered with a vibrant green sedum roof, softening the shapes and providing an improved outlook for neighbours looking down onto the bungalow.

The dark metalwork, red brick, yellow oak, and white stonework complement each other and transition from dark to light and smooth to textured. The materials have been selected to complement each other and to weather gracefully together over time.

- The house is in a highly accessible location with Ptal 6a rating.
- It is a small brownfield site is used efficiently to create a new home.
- Materials such as brick, stone and metalwork were used for their robustness and longevity.
- FSC certified oak from sustainable sources was used, to reduce carbon.
- The house is fitted with an air-source heat pump
- The house achieves a B energy rating which is very good.
- Biodiverse green roof which absorbs water, reduces heat from the air and provides a natural habitat for local wildlife.
- Minimises energy demand through the specification of low U-values, low air permeability and low thermal bridging to reduce heat loss.
- Has a good level of natural light.
- Has natural cross ventilation.
- The average house of this size produces 6 tonnes of CO2. This house produces 1 tonne of CO2.
- The embodied carbon of the house is 0.57 tonnes sqm. 37.6 tonnes in total.

This is a sensitive back land retail site surrounded by adhoc ground floor commercial extensions on one side and residential gardens other the other side. The apartments above the retail units look down onto the site. The site is a dense urban plot accessed from a busy retail street via a 1-metre-wide underpass shared with the tenants who live on the upper floors.

Whist securing planning permission for a new home on sensitive plot such this was difficult building the home was logistically even more difficult. Each material had to be carefully considered for it to be delivered, manoeuvred and assembled on the small backland site. It was like building through a straw.

All materials had to be man handled or wheelbarrowed into the site in small modules and then constructed together. The glulam beams were sized to ensure they could be threaded into place and final adjustments were made on site.

The brick-bonding posed a particular challenge as it was unfamiliar to the main contractor and accuracy was paramount because the walls are structural. We developed a special procedure for construction to ensure it would not hold up the programme. Not to mention the handmade bricks themselves required extra precision to build, the uneven surface of the bricks challenged the design of wanting to achieve a recessed pointing with imperfect bricks.

The budget for this project was very low, most of the budget went into the logistics of building the home. Therefore, we had to be efficient with the materials we used focusing the inherent qualities of those materials such as texture and reflectivity rather than their costs.

The handmade bricks were used as they were available, heavily discounted in price and worked with our design philosophy for the bungalow.