Delfyd Farm, Swansea

2025 RSAW (Wales) Award 
Small Project of the Year
Project Architect of the Year Neil Haddrill

Rural Office for Private Client
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 77m²

Delfyd Farm on the Gower Peninsula is located down towards the water level, with the rolling valleysides rising beyond. It is one of a small cluster of houses and agricultural buildings nestled against the woodland edge in this remarkable – and nationally significant – landscape.  

The project took a simple Victorian stone and render cottage on an exposed site and added ‘modular’ extensions to either side. Rural Office adopted a pitched-roof typology for these extensions, ensuring they remain familiar to the setting. 

The classic central front entrance door, with windows either side of the original house, is retained. Upon entering a compact hallway, the view continues through to the seaward-facing porch and the rear garden. The extensions slowly reveal themselves as you pass to the end of the hallway, adding an east–west axis to the house.

The whole project is an exercise in restraint in volume and detail. New spaces sit comfortably against the host, remaining subservient while providing volume, relief and interest to the more cellular spaces of the original dwelling. The original intent has been carried through meticulously, yielding a beautiful result.

The extensions are highly sustainable, incorporating timber framing and wood fibre insulation. Externally, larch timber cladding and zinc roofs passively protect the retained main house from the elements without altering it.   

Internal finishes offer richness in a pared-back way, including terracotta tiles and oak wall panels which are exquisitely composed and detailed to unify old and new parts into one coherent whole. Wall panels have integrated window shutters and sliding-door separating screens. These essentially act as valves to adapt and reconfigure the new spaces to suit the desired use, whether that be as a fully enclosed guest bedroom or a collection of open-plan spaces. 

The house is relatively modest, but feels bigger than it is due to a sophisticated composition of linked spaces with no dead ends, allowing views through it. Large windows offer carefully framed views out to the surrounding landscape. Windows also admits lots of light, bringing out colour and texture of oak wall panels and terracotta floors. 

Both extensions have small covered terrace spaces integrated into them. Skilfully carved out of the wooden volumes with continuous terracotta tiling underfoot, they are quite intimate and sheltered, offering a charming threshold between interior and exterior. The garden is largely as found, imperfect and ad-hoc, with self-seeded flowers scattering the rough grass; the only concession to control or intent here being the local ‘shell shingle’ on the ground, providing a delightful crunchy texture set against the controlled finishes of the new structures.

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RIBA UK Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and VELUX