Home > London architecture > House in Ditton Hill, Surbiton, Surrey, London

Surbiton Springs House, South West London Property Photos, Wadey Builders New Residential Building

Location: Surbiton, South West London, England, UK

RIBA Awards 2022 Winning Buildings and Architects

The Surbiton Springs House is one of the 29 winners of the 2022 RIBA National Awards for architecture.

Ditton Hill House is a new-build, two-storey detached house on a suburban street in Surbiton. The client’s brief was for a contemporary two-bedroomed home with an industrial aesthetic, but not simply a minimalist open plan box. Their priority was to create a home with a sense of openness, with generous, flowing living spaces that were able to be subdivided or left open as desired.

The house successfully blends vernacular mock-Tudor and industrial aesthetics into a unique and appropriate hybrid. With its traditional A-frame elevation the house borrows the language of the suburban mock-Tudor, ubiquitous to its locality, and turns it on its head by expressing it in a steel frame – the materiality of modernity. Unusually, the structure is designed to be exoskeletal, expressing the pitched form diagrammatically, as if it were drawn by a child.

The frame is combined with slurried brick infill panels, another nod to mock-Tudor building techniques. The garden elevation, Crittall-style glazing, meanwhile, offers a contemporary twist on the leaded windows synonymous with the mock-Tudor style, combined with the freshness of a Palm Springs summer house. The whiteness of the exterior continues a long tradition of modern white villas and civic buildings in the area dating back to the 1930s.

The deep, angled threshold to the front door leads directly through to the triple-height entrance hall. This voluminous entrance hall acts as a further threshold – a sort of internal courtyard – with deliberately raw materials. Passing from the hallway into the living room, there is a dramatic change in spatial quality, from compression to expansiveness, as the ceiling height increases and panoramic rear windows provide an uninterrupted view of the garden. Internally, the plan responds to the client’s brief by offering a variety of scales and spatial experiences.

As you move through the house, the material palette becomes increasingly warmer, with timber floors and plaster walls acting as counterpoints to the utilitarian, matter of fact, steel roof and floor decks, which Surman Weston saw as a modern interpretation of exposed Tudor timber beams. Upstairs, bedrooms and bathrooms are housed within the ‘loft space’, which, at five metres in height and primarily lit from above and has a peaceful, almost ecclesiastical quality.

The master bedroom opens onto a south-facing covered balcony – a space to enjoy the best and worst of the British weather. The rear elevation acts as a counter-point to the front and responds to its south orientation: clear glazing at the ground and a hit-and-miss brick pattern within the gable providing a more filigree and visually-permeable relationship between inside and out.

The judges were particularly impressed with the clarity of the conceptual approach. The industrial materials have been handled with restraint to provide a calm and sophisticated set of domestic spaces, all of this achieved within a modest budget.

Title: Surbiton Springs RIBA region: London Architect practice: Surman Weston Date of completion: Dec 2019 Date of occupation: Dec 2019

Project city/town: Surbiton Contract value: Confidential Gross internal area: 264.00 m² Net internal area: 247.00 m² Cost per m²: Confidential Contractor company name: Wadey Builders

Structural Engineers: Structure Workshop Environmental / M&E Engineers: Synergy Ecology Consultants: Astute Ecology Approved Inspector: MLM group

• RIBA Regional Award • Regional Award Short List • London South West

Surbiton Springs House, South West London images / information from The Royal Institute of British Architects

Location: Ditton Hill, Surbiton, South West London London, England, UK

Walters Way, Lewisham, South London Design: MAP Architecture photo : Taran Wilkhu Walters Way House, Lewisham

Wooden Roof Design: Tsuruta Architects photo © Ståle Eriksen Wooden Roof by Tsuruta Architects

The Picture House, Balham, South London Design: NOTO Architects Limited photo : French + Tye Balham House Extension

Pitched Black Design: Gruff Architects photograph © French+Tye Pitched Black House

London Architecture Designs – chronological list

London Architecture Walking Tours – tailored UK capital city walks by e-architect

Contemporary London Architecture Designs – more winners of the 2022 RIBA National Awards for architecture:

Sands End Arts and Community Centre design by Mæ Architects photo © Rory Gardiner

Guildford Crematorium, Godalming design by Haverstock photo : Simon Kennedy

Comments / photos for the House in Ditton Hill, Surbiton, South West London designed by Surman Weston Architects page welcome