Seabank Cottage
We completely refurbished Seabank Cottage, a flint-walled cottage facing the Norfolk saltmarshes and the North Sea. We designed for rising sea levels: the ground floor is rebuilt in robust materials intended to survive periodic flooding, and the living space has moved upstairs.
We opened the upper rooms into one bright living area looking out to the sky and the sea, and built a new, highly insulated timber roof inside the old one.
Architecture Today described the cottage as “bucolic brutalism” and “a boat on a rock”.
CPRE Norfolk Award 2011 - Winner
Winner of the 2011 CPRE Norfolk Award. The Campaign To Preserve Rural England annually recognises the contribution of a small number of projects which “protect and enhance the beauty, tranquility and diversity of the English countryside”.
“The composition is analogously a boat on a rock. It might be described as ‘bucolic brutalism’ – architecture that is both robust and pleasurable. The language of austerity is employed humanely and delivered with wit. The scheme is a model of architectural and environmental adaptation to the severity of the natural forces that this site – indeed all global coastlines – might face in the future.”
Architecture Today
“The shapes, the spaces, the good Norfolk light… make it airy, calm and welcoming. But living in it, sleeping, cooking, chilling, entertaining, one realises the sheer thoughtfulness of the design and the meticulous attention to detail, proportions, materials, the flow from one space to another, even the good jokes… make the cottage not just the perfect place to be but also a work of art.”
Owner
Photography by David Grandorge
