Hall + Bednarczyk Architects win an RSAW Award for this classic upside-down house, making extensive use of local materials and skills and skilfully occupying a steeply sloping site.
2025 RSAW (Wales) Award
Hall + Bednarczyk Architects for Ben and Fernanda Russell
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 398m2
Croes Fach is a new-build house on a beautiful site in the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park, just north of Abergavenny. Comprising a pair of mono-pitched structures – one single-storey, the other two-storey – its forms reference a local typology found at the remote artist community Capel-y-ffin in the Black Mountains.
The house replaces a small-windowed 1950s stone cottage that was set down into the lower garden. Early feasibility studies considered retention of that cottage, but it was ultimately deemed unviable.
Hall + Bednarczyk has carefully composed and positioned the new house’s two elements to sit comfortably on the steeply sloping site. Approached down a small country lane with dense hedgerow, the glazed upper floor of the main house reveals itself, with lower floors barely visible over the hedge.
This classic upside-down house is very efficiently planned, with primary and secondary spaces organised either side of a long wall that runs the length of the house, from the front door at ground to the rear kitchen door at the far end of the first floor. Clad in sumptuous walnut veneer, this wall provides a warm, crafted backdrop to the south-facing, fully glazed living space and external terrace.
A panoramic view up to the Sugar Loaf hill is the driver for the whole composition of the new house. Family bedrooms are located beneath the living area, at ground floor, with the guest wing extending out into the lower garden, skilfully modelled to ensure this remains subservient to the main volume. Bedroom spaces are all configured to ensure individual private outlooks onto paved terraces and into the garden beyond.
The is designed as a home for an extended family, with space for three generations to live together while also enjoying their own space when required. Croes Fach is highly crafted and extremely well built, inside and out.
Constructed from local Black Mountain sandstone, cedar cladding and zinc roofs, the whole house – including the beautifully crafted internal joinery throughout – was built by local main contractors and specialist joiners.
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Credits
Contractor Manylion Construction
Structural engineer Team 4 Consulting