The Salt House by Alison Brooks Architects, United Kingdom

October 18, 2009 Category: House, Residential

The Salt House was designed by Alison Brooks Architects is located in Essex, United Kingdom. The Salt House is a rare example of a sea contemporary UK home side. Built as a weekend and future retirement home for the owners, Salt House resumed the modernist tradition of the experimental house “beach” as a vehicle to explore new architectural possibilities site specific yet containing the potential for wider application. Widely published in this country and abroad, The Guardian architecture critic Jonathan Glancey describes Salt House as “one of the best new homes in Britain today.” In 2006, the company received Grand Designs Award for “Best New build house of the Year and was recently awarded the 2007 RIBA Manser Medal.

The client for Salt House is a couple whose parents live in the house next door, and the customer spent all his summers there as a child. This is a new house with a long history! This project received a brief very specific customer in terms of functionality – 3 beds / baths + guest suite, 3500sf, no swinging doors, a budget of £ 450K – but complete openness in terms shape and materials. The client is interested in the typology of the atrium house, including a strong visual connection from the 1st floor floor because of the special needs of a client of two children.

The project had been increased demand to meet the requirements of a new building on a plain high risk of flooding. We embrace these challenges, to design a house sympathetic to its context – but totally responds to contemporary opportunities for families ready for sea modern living side.
The two floors of Salt House is located at the end of a terrace of 19thC timber houses oyster fishermen boarded front common garden protected by a dike. Department of Environment measures necessary to prevent flooding of lifting the house above the level of its neighbors, this elevation is high, the house forms a ‘bookend’ to the terrace, balanced by the inn at other end of the terrace.

The shape and geometry of the new house interpreter local vernacular of hipped roof, bay window cabins. The front curve “so that the whole north side and south facades effectively become ‘soft’, maximizing the sea views to the north and gain passive solar energy from the south. The manipulation of the facades, in turn deflects the geometry of the roof with four sides to create a shape, irregular crystal. The three-dimensional facade acts as a tool to interact with the community garden, landscape and seascape, while expressing the dynamic forces of the extreme weather North Sea.

Framing the south facing courtyard entrance, the walk-traditional “balance” Typical input stage for breeding oysters, naturally became a family room or wing of the user. The house has neither forward nor back in itself. Both facades are highly glazed, permeable screens allowing ventilation openings and views in the house. Window openings and balconies travel freely across the facades expressing lightness and movement. The exterior walls and decks are clad in Ipe, a hardwood from sustainable forests sustainable giving the home a shiny silver altered.

The roof is finished in synthetic slates, matching neighboring roofs while enabling precision cutting in the drains, gutters and skylights. Maldon Council was surprised and happy with the proposals of the House of salt with the project in a local exposure of the new architecture yours in Essex, and inviting the scheme to be submitted for local awards.
Inside, interconnected spaces are “conditioned” by the wall and ceiling planes.

The ground floor of the building is designed as a continuous landscape that measures against the entrance courtyard to the south across the wooden bridge. Large sliding doors leading to slate floors central atrium, ‘folded’ staircase and a sunken living area with a fireplace wall that extends outside on the deck, garden and beach.
Upstairs, a second living area and study is bathed in light from the central atrium skylight, with elevated views of the estuary of the Blackwater, west and the port of St-Laurent to the east.

The space is framed by a series of folded element, the wooden railings of the mezzanine folded down to create the staircase, while the faceted walls of the 1st floor rooms are extensions of the geometry of trapezoidal skylights .
From the earliest stages, planning department Maldon Council had supported the scheme, but requires a full risk assessment of flooding that occurred in connection with the submission of planning. The design incorporates extensive proofreading wet and measures the dry seal, the most important was the elevation of the concrete slab on mini-piles.

Not only the mini-piles allow below ground water to flow past, reducing the hydrostatic pressure on the foundations, they reduce site spoil zero and, in the event of changes in long-term water level The house can be connected up to a higher level. Given this context Salt House is a prototype for the construction of flood proof residential.

The house is based on the principle of the structure of an elevated slab as a base for a steel portal frame. This allows two floors of the column free interior space, corner windows and a central opening large skylight, which doubles as a beam ring. Among the elements of the steel frame sheathed with marine ply to stiffen the entire frame. The owner describes Salt House as “a ship ready for the worst the North Sea can throw at it! Craft A local builder, open-minded client, and an attempt to transform a sensitive familiar local typology roots Salt House in time, place and family history.

The Salt House by Alison Brooks Architects in Essex, United Kingdom