AJ 40 under 40: Surman Weston

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.

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.

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