Old Court Mill, Sion Mills

GM Design Associates for Rural Housing Association
Contract value: £1.5m 
GIA: 1,100m² 
Cost per m₂: £1,371

Fourteen new affordable homes now occupy the site of disused builders’ yard, informed by the practice’s design guide for social housing in rural Northern Ireland. GM Design also drew up the regeneration masterplan for Sion Mills, once a model mill village where linen was made. A cottage used to occupy part of the site and the house types echo its proportions and characteristics in red tumbled brick, white render, hardwood doors (some as barn doors), grey uPVC windows, slim profile fibre cement slates and, in a nod to adjacent agricultural buildings, fibre cement corrugated profile sheeting.

See the rest of the Northern Ireland shortlist here. And all the RIBA Regional Awards shortlists here