Hayhurst & Co. completes a bungalow remodelling with a twist for the architect's parents, making playful use of traditional local materials on a steep site and taking a RIBA East Award and Small Project of the Year
2025 RIBA East Award
2025 RIBA Small Project of the Year
House
Hayhurst & Co. for Private Client
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 154m2
Architect Hayhurst & Co. is well known for a variety of inventive house extension projects in London, where the practice's office is based. In this case, however, their approach is deployed instead to remodel a 1980s pattern-book bungalow for practice founder Nick Hayhurst’s parents, on a steeply sloping site in Norfolk.
They had moved there a few years ago, choosing the classic seaside resort of Cromer where the Victorians once flocked via a railway line running all the way up to the northern tip of East Anglia.
The essence of the remodelling is in the subtle reshaping of the western wing of the existing H-plan bungalow. Previously an inward-looking arrangement which possessed no real views, now there are a series of picture-framed windows that are carefully aligned to look out across the town and its church tower to the expanse of the North Sea beyond.
For the new extension’s external elevations, the blockwork core is faced here and there with flint, making playful use of a traditional Norfolk building material while also introducing a visually relaxed feel to the scheme. Exquisitely detailed and constructed with a commendably modest budget, this is an architectural project which exults in the poetry of the everyday.
Hayhurst was keen to provide the kind of home that he knew his parents would feel comfortable living in for their permanent home, rather than something which might be more suited to appearing in design magazines or advertised for hire in Cromer’s holiday rental market. Hence there is the deliberate reuse of some of the old roof tiles as a wall cladding material, plus the retention of humdrum concrete slabs that still form the rear patio.
Yet the subtle internal planning and the scooped-out curvaceous volumes in the ceilings are evidence of a keen architectural sensibility. An ingenious three-way timber glazed door that slides and pivots enables the dining area to be easily opened up to the outside or else closed off as desired. This is undoubtedly a bungalow with a twist.
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Credits
Contractor A J Cooper Builders
Structural engineer Iain Wright Associates