Despite a year of on-off lockdowns, the past 12 months have seen the completion of two key projects for Surman Weston which have cemented its reputation as a materially and spatially inventive practice.
Ditton Hill House, its first new-build home, is a striking white house-as-gable that combines a steel exoskeleton with masonry infill panels, creating ghostly references to its Tudorbethan surburban setting together with large-span interiors.
At Hackney School of Food, its highest-profile community project to date, Phase 1 has seen the transformative retrofit of a primary school caretaker’s cottage into a light-filled specialist educational kitchen, its kit-of-parts repeatable at other schools.
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Source:Johan Dehlin
Ditton Hill House
Both exhibit a focus on structural and material experimentation and making that combine to form architecture with a clarity of construction and quirkiness of expression that have been evident since Tom Surman and Percy Weston, both now 34, founded the practice after studying together at the RCA. Their first five projects, which include Cork Study, the first new-build in the UK clad in expanded cork blocks, were all designed and constructed on site by the practice itself.
This understanding of materials and craft has seen them shortlisted three times for AJ Small Projects awards and underpins the practice’s fabric-led approach to sustainability.
With Phase 2 of Hackney School to come and another new-build dwelling on the horizon, to be constructed in-house, it’s a hands-on, experimental streak that bodes well for the future.
Milestones
2012 Tom Surman and Percy Weston graduate from RCA 2013 Writer’s Shed project (with Joseph Deane) completes 2014 Surman Weston founded
2017 Completes Cork Study, London 2018 Completes Replica House co-working space, Islington
2019 Children’s Cookery Cottage, Brunswick Primary School, Southwark, London, shortlisted for AJ Small Projects Award
2020 Completes Ditton Hill House and Phase 1 of Hackney School of Food
Surman Weston designs bespoke interior for London mansion block apartment
Building study: Ditton Hill House by Surman Weston
Surman Weston turns caretaker’s cottage into charity cookery school
AJ 40 under 40 in association with
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