Beautiful materials, immaculate detailing and excellent workmanship wrapped round strong sustainable credentials have won the glamorous Coast House a 2023 RIBA East Award
2023 RIBA East Awards
Coast House, Norfolk
Hudson Architects for private client
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 272m2
Sitting on a gentle slope with long views over undulating Norfolk fields, this is a house that is deeply informed by its site and the local architectural context, without being traditional in any way. Its facing of flint and reddish Corten steel echoes the flint and red clay pairing that dominates the local vernacular. Above, the higher roof of the principal space can be glimpsed.
Hudson Architects’ basic layout is satisfyingly logical. Entrance is through a relatively solid, low wall of bedrooms and secondary spaces that wraps the north and east sides of the building. The main space then opens up dramatically to the south and west beneath a sweeping butterfly roof. A free-standing wall of joinery frames the kitchen and creates a screen between the main sitting area and the way through to the bank of bedrooms and bathrooms, each of which gets east light.
This is a glamorous house, with beautiful materials, immaculate detailing and excellent workmanship. Underneath its highly wrought skin, though, there is a sensible, well-insulated timber frame structure giving very good thermal performance and, with the local flint/lime walling, achieving surprisingly good embodied energy figures. Roof overhangs are judged to control solar gain, and there’s provision for secure night-time ventilation. Excellent energy performance was a key part of the brief and is clearly an interest of the client, who is considering adding further photovoltaic panels to cover the house’s requirements for almost the whole year and at least some of the needs of the electric car. It is refreshing to see a high-specification private house where the client was willing to prioritise energy measures to the same degree as more obvious fittings and finishes.
Coast House is a highly considered, carefully designed and beautifully realised new building in the landscape. The client is understandably proud of it. It is also technically adept and impressively energy efficient, though it wears its sustainability credentials lightly. The architect is to be commended.
See the rest of the RIBA East winners here. And all the RIBA Regional Awards here.
To find out more about the whole RIBA Awards process visit architecture.com
RIBA Regional Awards 2023 sponsored by Gaggenau, EH Smith and Autodesk