Brings new life to Temple Cloud’s village centre
Temple Gardens, Temple Cloud
Archio for Bath & Stratford Homes
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 1,309 m²
This development has restored and reopened a disused pub and provided 10 hotel rooms and nine houses around a communal landscape, bringing new life to Temple Cloud’s village centre.
The disparate elements of the scheme work together to address the challenges of the site, in setting and financial viability. Facing the hotel rooms onto the community garden, in a barn-like two storey block on the busy A37, protects the site. A five-house terrace frames the garden while a pair of south facing, semi-detached houses addresses Temple Inn Lane. At the heart of the site a historic barn has been converted into more houses.
The scheme draws on the morphology and detail of the village, interpreting traditional form and fenestration. The tradition of brick reveals to rubble elevations and dressed stone surrounds to brick cottages is updated in the stretcher bonded brick reveals to the guest room windows (echoing the converted barn) and the crisp, projecting cast stone surrounds provide articulation and a contrast to the tweedy stock brick elevations. The three modules of precast ‘picture frames’ dance playfully across the elevations.
Temple Gardens demonstrates that contemporary architecture, inspired by the vernacular, can feel rooted in place.
Project Architect of the Year for Kyle Buchanan. Sponsored by Taylor Maxwell
See the other winners in the RIBA regional awards - South West