Surman Weston’s infill scheme subtly subverts and completes a south London urban terrace with careful craftsmanship and charm
This infill corner site is Surman Weston’s first self-build project, developed as a family home for one of the practice founders. Close to the bustling centre of Peckham, the house is a creative take on the terraced south London house and makes a positive contribution to the street, with playful details and a strong environmental conscience.
The Flemish bond brick facade is flush until shoulder height, when the headers gradually recess and eventually disappear to make a hit-and-miss perforated brick parapet to the roof garden and attenuate the house’s otherwise monolithic form. Privacy is ensured by curved timber fencing, topped with a sedum roof that hides storage for bikes and bins. The convex garden gate and entrance arch display charming wit – along with the greenhouse perched on the roof.
The project uses low carbon materials, such as Lignacite for load-bearing inner walls, and strives to limit material waste; blockwork walls are made from recycled construction waste, timber ends form surfaces internally and brick off-cuts were recycled as pavers in the garden.
Ground-floor living areas are finished with a lime slurry, allowing the blockwork to be read with subtlety as an interior finish. Thoughtful detailing is evidenced in staircase’s blue steel handrail, the greenhouse as a glass rooflight with its cork insulated retractable access way, and the perforated brick parapet braced internally by slender tubular steel angled supports. This is a well-considered, durable and highly imaginative design.
Jurors were particularly impressed by the charm and nuance of the project: ‘This is a playful and bespoke family home that brings a smile. It elegantly doesn’t compete with, but rather complements the existing context. The design offers a sense of lightness to its corner plot, through a carefully crafted exterior and balanced, proportionate volume arrangement. It subtly subverts the urban terrace row typology.’
What is your favourite feature of the house?
Percy Weston and Tom Surman The rooftop garden with its greenhouse is probably the most unusual feature and enjoyable part of the house. The house is right in the middle of Peckham, but the roof feels like a bit of an oasis above the hubbub of the bustling area. The greenhouse is a lovely space, particularly in the spring and autumn, when it’s a bit too cold or wet to sit outside to have dinner or a drink, but you still want to be outside.
What was the greatest challenge?
We began building at the start of 2021 and within months the price of materials and labour had skyrocketed due to the war in Ukraine and Brexit. To offset these price increases, and to keep the project on budget, we spent a huge amount of our own time at the house, physically on-site doing all sorts of manual labour jobs. Being on-site more was a double-edged sword – it led to us probably changing our mind about certain elements of the design more than we might have done otherwise, but it also meant that every detail had a lot of consideration and we were able to experiment at every turn... this probably did mean it all took longer though!
What lessons from the project could be applied elsewhere?
Going back to the rooftop, we really felt that maximising green space in this urban site was a primary design driver and think that this is one of the key successes of the house. While the greenhouse is quite pretty (we think) and relatively cost-effective, it serves several practical purposes as well. In the summer it helps drive stack ventilation, for instance, drawing air through the house, but it’s also useful for boring but essential things, like drying washing.