The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
The exceptional practice behind this year’s Manser Medal-winning scheme has a wealth of understanding of making and materials. Surman Weston celebrates construction and craft, but also makes its buildings as low-carbon as possible, from the sourcing of materials onwards.
Peckham House is a triumph of hands-on experimentation and contains many ideas for modest-sized houses, wrapped up in a delightful façade of hit-and-miss brickwork. Occupying an end-of-terrace site – previously a piece of scrubby grass – next to a Brutalist car park in Peckham, south London, it’s a refreshing take on the terraced house. And it’s the latest in a series of projects from this studio – founded by Tom Surman and Percy Weston after studying at the RCA – that punch above their weight, both conceptually and in terms of construction.
Other significant output includes the Hackney School of Food, which saw a redundant school caretaker’s house converted into a specialist food education centre for primary school children, and which was awarded the Stephen Lawrence Prize in 2022. The highly geometrical Surbiton Springs 2019 new-build house in south-west London (bottom left) ‘riffs off Surrey gin-and-jag belt half-timbered gables’, as the AJ’s Rob Wilson observed, with its exaggerated triangle of white brick and rendering. Meanwhile Cork Study, completed in 2015, was the first new-build in the UK clad in expanded cork blocks.
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A commitment to sustainable building is at the core of Surman Weston’s approach. Peckham House is a self-build tour de force and is, as the practice explains, its first self-initiated scheme working as client, architect and contractor, affording freedoms and broadening its experience beyond the parameters of a traditional architectural project.
The house itself is super-insulated, with triple glazing and an airtight envelope with MVHR and photovoltaics paired with an air source heat pump for space and water heating. It achieves an EPC ‘A’ rating and is designed to perform 80 per cent better than Building Regulation requirements.
The AJ highlighted Surman Weston back in 2020 as part of the 40 under 40 cohort of emerging talent. They embody a spirit of architecture as activism – and we’re delighted here to celebrate their lean and low-tech approaches, which offer a model for thoughtful practice.
To view all the winners of the 2024 AJ Architecture Awards, click here
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